


The Disappearer

by Porkchop_Sandwiches



Category: Breaking Bad, Wizards of Waverly Place
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Happy Jesse, Humor, Romance, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-18
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-01-19 21:23:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 62,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1484530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Porkchop_Sandwiches/pseuds/Porkchop_Sandwiches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I mean off the grid. New identities, new everything. No one would ever be able to trace you. Poof.” </p><p>Alex isn’t exactly what Saul was referring to. But, she’s screwed up so many spells, caused enough legitimate damage, that blipping in her favorite meth-head is basically the best mistake she’s ever made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blue Blipping, Mortal Kombat, and PowerAde

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, putting Wizards of Waverly Place and Breaking Bad together sounds pretty weird. But, this idea wouldn't leave me alone. I've made a few minor changes to make this story work. Jesse is smoking weed and drinking even though this starts out set in Season 3, and Alex hasn't met Mason yet.

“Such a good show, such a good show, such a good show!” Justin is literally bouncing up and down on the loft’s orange couch.

He grabs his mug of hot tea from the coffee table, which Alex thinks is pretty stupid considering it’s June, and balmy outside, and he’s not elderly.

He’s excitedly pointing to the periodic table design on the side of his cup. “Yeah, science!”

Alex has a mouthful of potato chips, slouched as far away from him as possible. It’s past ten on a Sunday night, so their parents are asleep, and Max is doing who knows what somewhere that isn’t the living room. “Gosh, Justin, is it like your job to make cool things as nerdy as possible?”

Justin sips his tea with a smug smile. “Excuse me, but if it wasn’t for my ‘nerdy’ tastes, you would have never even heard of _Breaking Bad_. Ever think of it that way? _Huh_?”

His voice is hitting that high pitch that she’s pretty sure only trolls can hear or like when she walks in on him playing with his Jim Bob Sherwood Space Cadet dolls, and she winces. “Puh-lease, if I hadn’t gotten Mono from Riley and been stranded on this couch for a week then I wouldn’t have been here to like hold your hand through that awesome early first season episode when Emilio’s bloody body mush falls out from the bottom of Jesse’s bathtub.”

She squishes a pickle chip between her fingers. “Gore would really make everything better: mom’s telenovelas, those Mr. Clean commercials where everyone’s way too excited about mildew, my algebra class. But, you couldn’t handle just a little bit of drug dealer brain-goo because you’re insanely squeamish.”

Justin scoffs, stirring his tea. “Squeamish? My all-time favorite rock band is T.O.B., Tears of Blood. Their hottest song is ‘Crying Blood for You.’”

“Yeah, and it came out in like 1980-something. Also, newsflash: the only people who say ‘rock band’ when not referring to the video game are ancient and forty. Just say ‘band’ like a normal seventeen year old boy.”

The door to the terrace slides open and Max strolls inside covered head-to-toe in peacock feathers and some sort of yellow goop. He splays his arms out, surveys his clothes, and shrugs. “Goodnight.” He walks upstairs.

Alex shakes her head and nibbles on a chip. “The loft is going to smell like that for weeks.”

Justin nods, switches off the T.V., and grins. “I really wish I could spend the rest of my summer vacation stalking them in Albuquerque. I cannot believe Jesse shot Gale! Did he really shoot him? What will the psychological ramifications of such a violent act have on Jesse? Why do I have to wait an entire year before season four starts?”

Alex wants to shove a pillow down Justin’s throat, because really, everything doesn’t need to be picked apart. And, she’s not completely sure what ‘ramifications’ means other than a pretty funny image of a boy lamb behind a turntable, because that would be the best D.J. handle for a farm animal ever. But, shockingly, Justin’s said something not stupid.

“Technically, we don’t have to wait a whole year for fourth season.”

He stands up, straightening the cushions. “I’m pretty sure we do considering they’ve just started filming yesterday, nine AM mountain time.”

Alex raises an eyebrow.

“What? I follow Aaron Paul on Twitter.”

She fake-coughs into her fist, “Man-crush.”

He’s gathering all her snack wrappers from the coffee table, and rolls his eyes. “Alex, we both know that if I were, emphasize on ‘were,’ to have a so-called man-crush on anyone on _Breaking Bad,_ it would be Bryan Cranston. He just doesn’t have a Twitter account.”

He stacks their dishes, and places them quietly in the sink. “You’re the one who’s in love with Jesse.”

Alex stands with her Navajo blanket wrapped around her, watching Justin clean up like a total chump. “For someone who’s practically babysat Cupid, you use ‘love’ way too casually. I am not in _love_ with Jesse.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” he says. “If you need me, I’ll be studying for our hand magic quiz on Tuesday.”

It isn’t until she hears his bedroom door close that she realizes he’s distracted her from her evil scheming, and she does a broad, unnecessary scan of the living room before tiptoeing into the lair. She slides behind the front table and heaves their giant spell book open. And she has no idea where to start.

“Okay,” she says. She’s pretty sure these things come with a page near the beginning that tells you where stuff is, but she’s not looking to rip off any of her skull and bones press-on nails. Flipping to pages at random has worked out pretty good in the past anyway.

After five or so minutes, she reaches a section about time travel and universes and other things she never pays attention to during wizard lessons. She really just wants a spell that will go into the future and deliver a nice, fourth season box set ready to pop into the DVD player, like right now. Honestly, the print in this thing is so tiny she’s leaning about as close to the book as her dad does to an open door of a bakery. There’s one of those ant-fryer spy glass things that kids use in detective shows on the corner of the table, and she grabs it. Justin had a lame presentation on this magic spy glass a couple of days ago. She was texting Harper about the new fro-yo flavors at ‘Gurtbarn, but she vaguely remembers hearing Justin saying something about the thing-a -ma-bob making spells easier.

She’s muttering “Breaking Bad” as her fingertip finds a button on the handle, and she presses it. The line directly underneath the glass lights up like a Broadway name. And just as the familiar electrical sound of magic sizzles nearby, she remembers why this tool is helpful. It’s a shortcut to memorizing spells. Because you just point, click, and presto: you’ve ruined everyone’s day. Well, that last part really only applies to her.

She tries to read whatever it is that’s about to happen, but of course this is one of those annoying spells that hasn’t been translated from Latin. Before she can do anything else, a blue glow hovers over the lair’s recliner and morphs into the form of a guy. He’s wearing Air Force Ones, baggy jeans with his legs splayed, and a giant, mustard-yellow hoodie. His head’s tipped back, eyes closed, beer to his lips.

Alex latches a hand over her mouth because she definitely did not just squeak. But if she did, which she didn’t, she really wouldn’t be too hard on herself considering Jesse-freaking-Pinkman is sitting like twenty feet away. Jesse Pinkman is sucking down a bottle of beer in the lair, looking so him, maybe drunk, and absolutely hot.

The bottle is empty when he opens his eyes, and it’s shattered on the ground by the time he’s standing with that startled owl-look he gets when he’s defensive or bugging out. “What…the…hell?”

She props an elbow on the table, flashing her most comforting smile, and does one of those finger waves she usually hates. Screw it, she’s nervous. “Hi.”

His “hi” sounds a lot slower and deeper, and hearing it feels like a splash of pool water on a sunburn.

He rubs his face with both hands. “Shit, I knew that guy looked sketch as shit. Douchebag spiked my weed. Badger vouched for him, fucking red flag. Shit, shit, shit.”

“Whoa!” Alex says. “Never take advice from Badger. The dude can’t even flip a sign right. Come on, Jesse.”

His palms slide to the back of his neck. “What did you say?”

Alex mashes her lips together into a line.

He stomps up to the table, glaring. Up close, like probably two feet away, Alex can see from the way he’s looking at her that he’s not quite focused. She’s pretty sure he’s on something.

“Yo, how do you know my name, bitch?”

Alex grips the neckline of her camisole. Of course she’s in her pajamas when she meets Jesse Pinkman. That’s really an afterthought, because, _oh my, gosh_ , she’s beaming harder than Justin at PopCon. “Did you just call me a bitch?”

“Yeah,” he says. He slaps the table, and leans forward. “Why are you happy about that?”

He squints. “And why do look familiar?”

She flips her hair over her shoulder, elbow back on the desk. “I look familiar?”

He’s studying her, and Alex thinks this is a place she’d like to live forever, but then he snaps his fingers and points. “You’re Hannah Montana. Yeah, Jake watches this show. You wear a blonde wig and like your dad had that shitty line dancing song from the 90s. And you talk in a super annoying…nasally…. Yo, why aren’t you talking with a Southern accent?”

“Blonde wig? Southern accent? Is this like some role-playing thing you want to do? Because to be honest, I’m pretty killer at speaking British. And I have this cute, red plaid mini skirt that I got on sale at Suburban Outfitters that I swiped from an English chick while she was texting someone. I also have a red bra.” She tries to shift her hair to her other shoulder, but knocks over a stack of flying carpet manuals like an idiot. She pops a hand to her waist and grins. “I’m Alex.”

Jesse gives her a lingering onceover, leans closer. “How old are you?” He winces. “Forget it. I haven’t had a wet dream since like ninth grade, and I’m probably too wasted to do anything. Shit, why do you look so familiar?”

She shrugs. “No idea. But, I can tell you that you are so not asleep right now.”

Jesse closes his eyes, grabbing a handful of his hair. “Yo, if this isn’t a dream, I’m tripping balls like no other.”

Alex is fully aware that revealing magic to the world is wrong and unethical and blah, blah, blah, but Jesse isn’t really a real person. It’s like what they say, rules are made to be broken, and loopholes are the bomb. “Hypothetically, what would you say if I told you I was a wizard, and I know everything about you because your life is a T.V. show and I summoned you here by accident?”

He shoves his hand in his back pocket.

Alex does _not_ feel like getting shot in the face, so she whips her wand out from her UGG boot. She’s got it inches from his chest, the end glowing, and she realizes the only thing he’s carrying is a pack of cigarettes.

He slips one between his lips. “That’s a dope Harry Potter wand. Skinny Pete and Badger have ones that like make noises and shit.”

Just as he strikes his lighter, Alex flicks her wand. The flame goes out, his cigarettes cracks in half, and he shoots back into the recliner. “Dude, don’t smoke in the lair. This place doubles as a cooler for my family’s sub shop. Can’t have the cold cuts smelling like an ash tray.”

He spits out the butt of his cigarette with a terrified expression. “Yo, why can’t I move?”

“Oh, I paralyzed you from the neck down.” Alex says this casually like she’s giving him directions to Brooklyn.

She strolls over and sits on the armrest, reaching out to barely graze her fingers over the stubble on his jaw because she can, and she’s still a little stunned. Her head is in dark, exciting places, and she has to blink a few times before she’s pulled it out of the gutter.

“Okay, I think it’s pretty obvious that you’re not going to believe anything I say until we get this out of the way.” She takes a deep breath through her nose. “Your name is Jesse Pinkman. You were born and raised in the ABQ and have a younger brother named Jake who is an overachieving geek, feel ya on that one, and you live at your Aunt Ginny’s house. She passed away from cancer, and at some point you started to sell meth with this dumbass Emilio guy. He ended up as human Slurpee in your bathtub.”

She pauses, a little proud of how attentive he is. “Walter White, who used to be your chemistry teacher, saw you slipping out of the window of some MILF’s house during a bust, and he blackmailed you into selling meth with him. First you guys were in an RV, but like that didn’t work out. Tuco kidnapped you, Hank killed him, and now you’re working for Gustavo Fring who is like the creepiest badass I’ve ever seen. He hooked you guys up with a sweet lab, you know, when it’s not contaminated by a fly and Victor isn’t watching you like a Hispanic gargoyle.”

She taps her chin. “Oh, and your meth is blue because you stopped using cough syrup and stuff, and it has this other junk in it called menthol or something.”

“Methylamine,” he says. He licks the corner of his mouth, looking dazed. “How do you know all this shit?”

Alex sighs, because didn’t she already go over this? “I’m a wizard, and I’ve watched your life as a T.V. show. It’s called _Breaking Bad_. Tonight was the season three finale. And just to hurry this whole thing along, I can prove that by saying I watched you cap Gale in the face.”

“What?” A strange mix of panic and confusion flickers over his features. “I didn’t do anything to that guy. I barely know him. Gus fired him after I got out of the hospital. Yo, I don’t even have a piece.”

Something that may be guilt flares up in her gut like the nauseous feeling she gets when she’s had too many hot garlic Buffalo wings, but she’s not positive, because guilt really isn’t her thing. “Interesting. Have you met a girl named Andrea?”

“Nah, like I don’t think so.”

“Tan skin, dark hair, less hot version of me?”

He shakes his head.

“You know, Brock’s mom. Brock?” She playfully punches his arm, but he just stares where her fist was. “He’s a little kid who doesn’t talk much, but like pulls on your heartstrings or whatever, so you don’t try to sell crystal to the mother of a small child.”

He balks, seeming for real confused.

“She’s in your NA group that you’re using to sling dope onto because Fring won’t meet with you and you feel shafted. You’re skimming product off the top to prove to everyone you still have balls,” she laughs, “Bitch.”

Jesse appears to think this over. “Not gonna lie, that’s a sweet plan. I mean, yeah, I’ve thought about taking a little off the side. But like, I didn’t think about going after like a niche or whatever. You think I could, you know, borrow that idea? Maybe cut you in a little of the profit and you can like let me go home and not kill me with weird wizard shit?”

“It’s your idea, and I would never kill you.” She pats his chest, kind of lingers too long, and pulls back with a nervous chuckle. “So, you believe me now, right?”

“Well, I can’t feel most of my body and you know shit that like no one else does. So, yeah.”

“Awesome!” She smiles with her wand raised. Just because she has no idea of how to get him back into the word of his show, doesn’t mean he needs to know that. Clearing her throat, she makes a spectacle of lowering her wand back to her lap with an eye-thing she thinks looks like she’s hesitating.

“Hear me out for a sec. I _could_ blip you back to your sad, lonely house in New Mexico so you can watch Walt spend an entire day flipping out over a fly, which I’m pretty sure is what you’d go back to. _Or_ you could play hooky with me, _and_ play video games.”

“Yo, my arms don’t work, bitch.”

She lifts her wand to softly bob him on the nose. “Promise you won’t run?”

“Yeah.” With a flick of her wrist, he slumps forward. “That felt so weird. It’s like my bones hurt.”

She pats his chest again, because she doesn’t do apologizes, and touching him is really fun. “So, have you ever played Mortal Kombat?”

“Duh,” he says, rolling his shoulders into the back of the chair.

“Well, have you ever played Mortal Kombat with 3-D voice-activated holograms with real swords and ninja stars? Guess what? I already know you haven’t.” She stands and pulls him up to his feet. “Do you want to be the blue icy one or the orange one with the bug name?”

“Psh, I’m always Sub Zero.”

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna…melt you…like…a puddle.” She cringes, because _wow_ , that was Justin-trying-to-flirt-with-a-customer lame.

“Nice smack talk.”

She grabs a control from where she hid it in the book shelf and tosses it to him. “Just stand there and look cute while I karate chop you to pieces.”

“Sure you will.” He smirks, fiddles with remote. “Yo, how do you work this thing?”

She jabs her thumbs into the A and B buttons, yelling, “Round one!”

Their players are projected to life in exaggerated Kung-Fu fighting stances.

“Roundhouse kick!”

And Jesse’s hologram drops like a water balloon from the terrace. A somewhat racially insensitive Asian male voice bellows, “Sub Zero, K.O.”

Alex sighs when she’s sees him all frustrated and sore loser-y. So she walks over, and points out all the buttons and explains it. And being fair really requires way too much talking. But, he seems to appreciate the effort. Once he’s got the freezing move down, he grins and nudges her arm. This is the best night ever.

\---

Alex feels something yank her arm hard enough to like dislocate her shoulder. The light in the lair is still on. Her feet are propped up on the table with the rest of her body snug against something soft that smells like that basement party she went to last week: weed, beer, and Axe body spray. Still exhausted, she remembers this is Jesse, and nestles closer into his jacket.

“Alex!” Crap. Only one person stage-whispers like that.

Before she can sit up, Justin hauls her off the couch. It’s not until they’re standing by the portal window that she notices he’s changed clothes; equally dorky ones, but definitely a new outfit.

“What day is it?”

Justin scowls at her. “It’s Monday morning.”

He clutches her chin with one hand and shines his mini Star Wars flash lights in her eyes. “Alex Russo, are you inebriated?”

She shakes him off. “Speak English.”

“Are you drunk?”

“What? I haven’t had alcohol in…ever.”

He rolls his eyes. “Alex, I’ve seen you drunk-eat Chunky Monkey on enough Saturdays at three in the morning on the kitchen floor to know that’s a load of baloney. And, I just disposed of broken glass from a beer bottle on the floor. _And_ ,” his whisper takes on a scandalized hissing effect, “Aaron Paul is clearly passed out on the couch! I know I made that stalking joke earlier, which, note to self: never do that in front of you again. But, that’s completely different than teleporting/kidnapping Aaron Paul from New Mexico so you can….” He makes vague gestures with his hands that either mean breakdance-fighting or sex. She’s not sure.

“We just played a bunch of video games last night. The 3-D ones got pretty exhausting so we switched over to normal Need for Speed, and I guess we just fell asleep.”

“What about the beer bottle?”

“It was his. He only had one.”

“It is still an enormous wizard ethical no-no to even play video games with whomever you want whenever you want, especially when they’re filming the greatest television show of all time.” He glances over at Jesse, and narrows his eyes. “Wait. Why is Aaron Paul dressed like Jesse Pinkman? By the time I left you in the living room, they would have been done shooting for the day.”

Alex does her best like-I-give-a-crap shrug. “Maybe he’s being like method or whatever.”

Justin seems to mull this over as Jesse jerks awake, takes in the glare of the overhead light, and buries his face into the couch. “Yo, I need like mad amounts of Advil right now.”

Justin cocks his head to the side. His face pales. “Alex, is that Jesse Pinkman?”

Jesse turns his head to them, heavily squinting. “Gatorade me, bitch.”

Alex is laughing so hard she almost doesn’t hear when Justin yelps out a, “Definitely Jesse!”    

He grabs her elbow and tugs her to the front table, still whispering for some reason. “How did this happen?”

“I don’t know. I was trying to find a spell that would let me…us…watch the fourth season now, and I used this,” she lifts the spy glass, “whatchamacallit because the words are so small and well….” She points to Jesse who’s still muttering about his headache.  

“Alex, you used the Spy Spell? Were you not listening at all during my thoroughly researched, eloquently recited twenty minute presentation?”

She responds with a blank stare.

He nods. “Right, should have known that already, context clues and whatnot. So, what spell did you highlight?”

Alex turns to the spell book on the floor, which is still opened, but not anywhere near where she remembers reading from it. A light breeze of regret wafts through her brain before she pulls up one of those no-shits-were-given expressions that her teachers love so much. “I may not remember the name off the top of my head.”

The veins in Justin’s neck are getting all purple and angry.

She clasps her hands together. “ _But_ , I can narrow it down by telling you it was in Latin.”

Justin’s eye twitches, and she’s reminded how this kid is like one Adderall and an A minus away from a complete mental breakdown. “Alex, there are over 500 spells still in their original Latin translation. Please tell me you know something, anything else about the spell.”

She presses her fingertips against her forehead. “Uh, well, it was in the section about galaxies or like universes and stuff. I think.”

He nods, arms crossed. “Okay, that at least narrows it down to approximately fifty or sixty. We can work with that.”

Just as Alex is thinking of a way to throw all this junk on Justin, she realizes Jesse is slumped against the desk, looking all bleary-eyed and beautiful.

“Yo, Alex, what’s a guy got to do around here to get some Gatorade?”

“We have PowerAde out in the soda fountain, which I’m sure my brother would love to get for you.” She gives Justin a push, but he’s staring at Jesse, mesmerized.

Justin actually waves, like a little-kid-in-front-of-Mickey-Mouse-wave. “I’m Justin!”

Jesse clearly gives no shits. “I’m thirsty, bitch.”

Justin gleefully gapes, turning to Alex. “Did you hear that? He called me a b-word!”

“What is wrong with you people? Does bitch mean like something different here?” He straightens himself, stumbles a few feet. “Shit, I’m just gonna find some water.”

“No!” Justin says. He seems slightly embarrassed for yelling. “One PowerAde coming up.”

He scampers off to the sub shop, and since Alex doesn’t have a lot of time, she’s got her wand out before the door’s shut.

“Last night ruled the body, now I rule the mind, still ill, now it’s killed.” Alex points her wand at Jesse, the blue aura around him dissolving as she smiles. “Best hangover cure ever.”

He’s patting himself down like he’s searching for his keys. Or maybe he’s just not used to magically-cured sicknesses; weird. “That was tight. I like don’t feel anything.”

Alex nods reverently. “Yeah, really helps when you’re grandmother’s in town, and you get dragged to a seven AM mass after you did like seven Jell-O shots the night before, and your mouth tastes like skittles and death.”

He laughs and looks like he wants to say something, but Justin’s jogging back with a large Waverly Place cup.

“I wasn’t sure if you were more of a Fruit Punch or Mountain Blast kind of guy. So, I got Mountain Blast because it’s blue.” Justin proudly hands him the drink.

“Get it? It’s blue, like your ‘product.’” Justin winks.

“Good one.” Jesse gives Alex one of those can-you-believe-this-guy glances, and she can’t believe how quickly he’s fitting in. “So, I guess you’re a wizard too.” He downs about half of his drink. “Does everybody know about me here or just like you and Alex?”

“That is an excellent question. Isn’t it, _Alex_?” Justin’s jerking his chin in her direction like someone’s lurking behind her back. But, when she turns around, it’s just the same old bookshelf that’s always there. “Never mind. Well, not everyone per se knows who you are. It’s more of a select group of cultured individuals with refined tastes in pop culture…and Alex.”

“Right, not sure if that was an insult, but I’ll let ya have it anyway,” Alex says. She has way more important, Jesse-filled things to do than translate nerd-burn. “Now, I think that you should finish that thing we talked about, you know, the whole Latin translation project, and I can show Jesse around New York.”

Jesse grins. “Yo, we’re in New York?”

Justin swings Alex around so her back’s to Jesse, huddled close like when they conference-out a way to ditch Max after school. “Alex, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to frolic around the city with a fictional drug addict who is most likely carrying a firearm.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. This Jesse is like from right after he went back to work at the lab. And you know what that means, right?” She smirks, nodding. He doesn’t respond, and _gosh_ , he’s so hopeless. “He’s single, you dummy.”

“Who cares? Look….”

“No, you listen. Mom and Dad are going to be awake like super soon, and I don’t think they’ll be too happy if they see us harboring a meth-head. Just let me keep him occupied for a few hours while you find the spell, and we’ll send him back before Mom’s ten cheese enchilada surprise is out of the oven for dinner.”

“A few hours? Alex, it’s eight-thirty in the morning. Dinner won’t be until seven, and that’s only if pro-wrestling isn’t on tonight.”

Alex nearly gags. “Gross! I’m awake before noon?” She pinches the back of her neck. “So we’ll be gone for most of the day. We’ll get out of your overly-gelled, stupid hair, and you can concentrate. Then we can meet back in my room.”  

He frowns. “Fine. But, try to stay within the limits of all New York state federal laws.”

“What’s that? I think my selective hearing is being weird.” She slaps his shoulder, turning back to Jesse fidgeting with his lighter. “Hey, you ready to go?”

His smile makes her feel like she’s chain-drinking Red Bull. “Hell, yeah, bitch.”

 


	2. 7-Eleven: Part One

Jesse’s never been to the Big Apple. He totally calls it that. So, Alex has no choice but to smack him upside the head as they’re sitting in a mostly empty subway car, sharing the jumbo chocolate chip muffins they “liberated” from the sub shop. But, since everything’s new, she humors him and goes to a lot of those tourist places like the Empire State Building, and Central Park, and Times Square. It takes an ungodly amount of time, and it’s like she’s toting around all her younger cousins again, except without all of the sticky handholding and shouting in Italian.

He’s happy the whole time, like permanent grin, fresh-faced and easygoing. And seeing him like that makes all the crowds and walking and going to the Central Park Zoo for the millionth time pretty worth it.

They get pizza from a vendor a couple of blocks from the zoo, making their way to a 7-Eleven because he’s out of cigarettes.

She takes a huge bite of her slice, talking with her mouth full. “Are there foods in Albuquerque that are like New York pizza? You know, like that people get there because they’re, well, there.”

He’s polished his slice down to the crust, and he’s got sauce on the corners of his lips, and it’s pretty adorable. “I guess Mexican food is a pretty big deal.” He glances at her. “Are you Mexican?”

She nods. “Well, my mom is Mexican. My dad is Italian. So, I’m both.”

Jesse seems pretty focused on something as he crumples up his greasy napkins and does one of those flashy basketball tosses into a trash bin. “Your mom’s Mexican. Your dad’s Italian. You live on a street called Waverly Place. And you’re a wizard.”

He doesn’t say anything for like a block and a half.

“What?” Alex says.

“Yo, I don’t know.” He scratches his head through the material of his beanie. “Thought I had something, but I fucking lost it. I swear you still look familiar.”

“Understandable,” she says. “Considering all of those hot dreams you have about me.”

He rolls his eyes, smirking a little, and he’s holding his hand flat about a foot over her head. “You gotta be at least this tall to ride this. And you know, legal and shit.”

“You know, I have a wand that could make both of those things happen, right?”

They cross the street, silent for a while until he says, “Oh, the ABQ is also really big on green chili.”

She elbows him. “Secret ingredient: chili p, yo!”

He gives her a double-take as they walk into 7-Eleven. “Yo, didn’t I tell you to stop quoting me or whatever? Makes me feel like I’m SpongeBob-fucking-Square Pants. And it’s creepy as hell.”

The image of Jesse in a pineapple under the sea wearing tube socks and junk is too much, and Alex’s cracking up as she surveys the drink selection.

She grabs a Diet Cherry Coke, turns to the front, and catches a glimpse of that stupid grey retro gas station shirt she’s way too familiar with. “Crap.”

“What?” he says, though he’s not looking at her. He’s got a Mountain Dew in one hand and a Dr. Pepper in the other.

As he’s debating sodas, she’s trying to decide if she has enough time to duck and hide. Because Mr. Gas Station Shirt is walking with some blonde chick in a way-too-short skirt and a stupidly ironic _Power Rangers_ shirt and she’s pretty much cackling at whatever he’s saying. They’re right out by the front door.

Alex steps by Jesse to stand behind a chip display about forehead level. She lowers her voice. “My ex-boyfriend is about to walk in here. And I really don’t want to talk to him, like at all.”

Jesse turns on the heel of his sneaker, gripping a Mountain Dew, just as Dean and Blondie stroll inside.

“Youse gotta try anchovies at least once. They smell nasty, but those fishes don’t taste nothin’ like they smells.” Dean’s voice is as loud as ever, and it kind of physically hurts Alex to hear it. His new girlfriend or whatever is still giggling. Maybe she has like a condition, like Tourette’s or she’s the devil. Dean tickles her side in the candy aisle. “All’s I’m sayin’ is youse gotta have an open mind when you order at Sal’s. Ya order cheese at Sal’s and they’ll kick ya out big time.”

Alex is so focused on remembering Sal’s on weekday nights of garlic knots and those salty, tiny fish and sometimes Dean’s apartment afterwards when his mom wasn’t home and she’d break curfew and say things like she missed her connecting train that it takes her a while to notice Jesse’s snickering.

He’s pretending to read the back of a pack of Funyuns. He whispers, “Why does your ex sound like he’s doing a shitty impression of Fonzie? Like shit, does he strut around with a toothpick in his mouth and call people wise guys?”

“Oh, because you’re white guy gangster act is so _cool_.”

He trades his Funyuns for Jalapeño Doritos. “Yo, I’m legit, bitch. This douche seems about as badass as a stuffed bear in a leather jacket signing Elvis.”

She glares at him, though it’s kind of hard to look intimidating when you’re hiding in snack foods. And yeah, Dean does have a leather jacket, and he may overdue the whole I’m-from-New-York bit a little too much. Who cares?

Jesse grabs for some Sun Chips, and it’s a huge mistake. The packaging crunches in his grasp like it’s wired with microphones. Alex tries to bend down lower, but her hair gets caught in the metal rack, and she clears a row of individually wrapped Oatmeal Crème Pies to the floor like it’s her job.

Dean and the female version of The Joker are by the Slurpee machine, staring at her. And she hopes they both die of brain freeze.

Alex attempts to just sprint right out of there, but the second she moves, she remembers she’s still literally attached. She starts to detangle herself from the convenient store fixture when Jesse chuckles. Now is really not the time to make fun of her.

“Whoops.” He’s like projecting or something, like everyone needs to hear this. And _gosh_ , he seriously needs to shut up. Instead he steps behind her, one hand heavy on her hip, the other freeing her hair. His voice is kind of gravelly. “You’re so cute when you’re clumsy.”

Just as she’s taking in the warm weight of Jesse’s chest on her back, his mouth is against her neck, and all thinking floats away into a sunshine land of rainbows and princess castles and things she would never ever admit to featuring in her happy place. She may even shudder as he presses another kiss closer to the hollow of her throat.

Dean’s face is like a candy cane: pale and red all at once. He makes some joke to his girlfriend, but she’s giving him a suspicious stink-eye, even after he’s paid for their slushies and they waltz out with him attempting to hold her hand.

Alex has deliciously lost count of how many times Jesse’s kissed her, only mildly embarrassed by the way that middle-aged dude buying batteries is staring at them.

“They bounce?” He’s kissing his way closer to her ear.

She hates herself for it, but her eyes are all fluttery, and she swallows hard. “Not yet.”

His laugh feels like the bass of a stereo against her skin. “Liar.”

He pulls away with a big, loud smooch on her cheek like this is some hilarious joke she’s needs to get in on.

Alex tries, really hard to, smoothing her palm down the side of her face like she can wipe away her flush. But, she’s a quivering, flustered mess. He seems to notice, because he just laughs harder.

She’s doing something with her voice that may be chuckling as they walk up to the counter. They’re about third in line, and she jumps slightly when his hand is on her shoulder.

“Yo, they don’t have my brand.”

“Huh?”

“These bitches don’t carry Wilmington’s.”

Alex realizes he’s talking about cigarettes. “That’s because they don’t exist. Didn’t you used to smoke like Parliaments or something in the earlier seasons?”

He points at her. “Don’t refer to my life as a fucking T.V. show.”

They’re at the counter, the bald, portly attendant giving Jesse a surprised look she’s seen a few people throw at him throughout the day. She isn’t sure why, but no one’s asked for an autograph, just stared and like shook their heads like they weren’t positive it was him.

The guy rings up their drinks. “Man, I love _Breaking Bad_! My wife and I watched the finale last night. Best episode so far. Man, sometimes I really think you’re on meth. You’re doing a great job.”

Jesse appears equally startled, irritated, and nervous. “Yeah, thanks man. Uh, I’ll take a pack of Parliaments.”

He retrieves them with a grin. “Too bad we don’t have Wilmington’s, am I right?”

Jesse nods, so distracted he even pays for Alex’s soda.

He doesn’t say anything until they’re waiting at a crosswalk as he’s lighting up. “Fucking weirdest day of my life.”

Alex sips her drink, and steers him left. “Youse gotta have an open mind.”

He laughs around his cigarette, and makes two thumbs ups. “Ay!”

They side-step a couple holding hands and start down the subway stairs.

 


	3. Freedom Tunnel and Fro-yo

“This is the Freedom Tunnel,” Alex says. She throws her hands up, gesturing to the murals, graffiti, and sketches on the walls as she trots over to her supplies. “It used to be an abandoned train tunnel. But, the city made it so it’s like legit for artists now.”

Alex snatches up a can of lime green spray-paint. She pops off the lid and shakes it, steps back and starts to do some layering for the scales she already started on a few days ago.

“Sick.” Jesse says it in awe. “Does it like mean something?”

She takes in her masterpiece: a flashy, almost surreal snake wrapped around a severed hand with the stump dripping blots of blood like ketchup from a really good burger. The snake’s Day-Glo tangerine fangs are halfway in a blue vein across the wrist. She shrugs. “I just think it looks cool.”

“Are any of these other ones yours?”

She points to a smattering of clouds with constellations swirling inside, and then to a skull she did with lilies blooming in the sockets.

“These would make some killer tats.”

Alex feels like she’s heard him say something similar, but she’s not really sure when. He’s staring at the skull design on the bricks. The dusky lighting of the tunnel emphasizes the ember on his cigarette and how much it’s shaking between his fingers.

She gets a few steps closer to him because he looks so sad and puppy-like. And she kind of just wants to wrap herself around him like that snake. But, she’s not _that_ flexible, so she decides to gently tug on the droopy sleeve of his hoodie. She sways his arm back and forth. It was her go-to move when Max was little and crying and she was trying to watch T.V., and it always seemed to make him feel better.

“Hey, you still here?”          

Jesse shakes his head. But, his fingers gently circle her wrist. His thumb’s doing something that feels nice on the back of her hand. He drops it.

Alex is horrible when people get emotional or whatever, and she’s desperately trying to think of some way to change the subject. “Can you keep a secret?”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Really?”

She scratches the back of her neck. “Yeah, I guess co-running a meth empire is kind of a big one.”

She absentmindedly scrapes the bottom of her Converse against the concrete, and sighs. Looking both ways down the tunnel, she lifts the material of her red t-shirt all the way up to her collarbone. Along her right rib cage, just below the cup of her bra, is a series of seven, small swirling shooting stars in black ink. “Designed it myself. No one has seen it. You know, other than the tattoo artist. And like some creepy guys who were sitting in the shop with Taco Bell.”

“Nice,” he says. “Kind of cliché though. No offense.”  

Alex chews on the inside of her cheek. “I got it like right after school got out for the summer. My report card came in the mail. It was…well, not amazing, like I passed, but barely. I knew Justin was gonna get straight A’s, because he has since like he was a fetus. But, then wizard report cards came out.”

She kicks the empty paint can by her ankle, and the clattering is settling in the same way the noise of traffic helps her sleep. “I have this wizard competition coming up in a few years. Only one sibling in each family can stay a wizard, and this competition thing determines who that is. My younger brother, Max, is a total lunkhead. No worries there. But, everything comes easy to Justin. Like even when I try, I just, I don’t know, screw it up. What’s the point in studying and stuff when like I already know I’m gonna ruin it royally? The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to get this tattoo. Because even when I lose my powers forever and become normal, I can look at this and…feel like there’s still a little magic left in me.”

She shuts her eyes at how utterly cheesy that sounds. Her shirt’s still hoisted up like she’s waiting for someone to toss her some beads. Then a quivering sensation shoots to her gut. And she doesn’t know why until she recognizes the texture of fingertips on her tattoo.

With her eyes open, it seems like he’s searching for words. It’s pretty endearing because he’s only known her for like a day. His thumb is doing that nice thing again, like a calming, stroking motion that would most likely prevent her from hearing anything he’d have to say anyway.

She stares at his mouth. He pulls back.

“Alex!”

She tugs her top down, awkwardly messing with her hair. Harper glides out from a shadowy spot in the tunnel like she’s Batman or something. Well, if Batman carried an unnecessary flash light and wore a dress covered in blue and pink cotton candy.

“Hey, Harper!” Alex says. Her fake enthusiasm is pointless because Harper drags her past three murals before she faces Alex with her judgment eyes ablaze.

“Alex Russo.” Her tone is all sorts of sharp and appalled and a crappy attempt at hushed.

Jeez, do none of her friends know what the term ‘whispering’ means? Oh man, did she just call Justin a friend? What’s happening to her today?

Harper cups the side of her mouth. “What do you think you are doing?”

“That depends,” Alex says. She twirls a lock of hair around her finger. “What exactly did you see?”

Even with Harper’s flashlight off and just a single bulb above their heads, Alex can tell Harper’s blushing. “It seems as if you were standing in the dark…with a man, like a grownup man…and your blouse was not covering what it should have been covering. And he was _touching_ you.”

Alex is more than relieved that Harper didn’t get a peak of her tattoo, which means this won’t swing down the line to Justin and then to her definitely red-faced, incoherently sputtering father. No one needs to know about her new ink or those permission slips she forged or the cash she “borrowed” from Justin.

Harper shakes Alex by the shoulder. “I know you’re still upset because Dean broke up with you, but that is no excuse for allowing someone to violate you in public.”

“Chill out. It’s not violating if I like it,” Alex says.

Harper chokes out a gasp that reminds Alex of one of those ladies in big dresses with the hoops underneath who go around fainting a ton. “You like _that_ guy?” Her eyes dart over her shoulder. “He was smoking a _cigarette_! And he’s dressed like a _hooligan_ , a hooligan, Alex. Don’t you know what kinds of things hooligans do? _Drugs_ , like drug-drugs, like the _really bad_ ones.”

“Yo, I can hear everything you’re saying!” Jesse has a stack of spray-paint cans piled up with a loose rail road track poised like he’s about to demolish the thing. And it looks way more fun than continuing this conversation.    

Alex yells, “Batter up!”

Jesse grins, swings away, and the cans tumble in about every direction. It’s a mess and chaotic and she loves it.

“I totally have to try that!” Alex moves to run over to him, but Harper is being so clingy today, literally clinging to her shirt.

“Did you forget we had plans today?” Harper passes a hand down her ridiculous homemade dress like she’s showing off that Mustang Alex has had her eye on. “Cotton candy? We’re supposed to go to ‘Gurtbarn and try the new cotton candy flavor. Jiminy Crickets, Alex, does the sanctity of Fro-yo Fun-day Monday mean nothing to you?”

Alex grimaces. “Not if you keep calling it that. Look, I just had a lot going on. Why don’t we….”

“Yo,” Jesse says. He flips the board in the air and catches it. “Let’s just go to this fancy yogurt place. I’m hungry as fuck.”

Harper’s cheeks flare up like Raspberry Rad nail polish because, in her words, she’s “allergic” to “swear” words.

It’s close to like a natural phenomenon that Jesse only drops another three F-bombs on the way to ‘Gurtbarn. The train is packed with people getting off work, so they don’t talk until they’re sharing the only free bench that’s also in front of Al’s Liquor Mart. The tables in front of ‘Gurtbarn were overrun with children and their bobbed-haired, giant sunglass-sporting mothers. It was disgusting.

Harper licks her spoon of brightly colored yogurt like she’s five. She shoots a hand over Alex’s fro-yo because Alex is sitting between her and Jesse. “I don’t think we were properly introduced. I’m Harper.”

Jesse wasn’t feeling ‘Gurtbarn, opting for hot dogs instead. He wipes mustard from his mouth and gives Harper a sideways high-five. “Jesse.”

Harper scrunches her nose up, delicately wiping her palm with a napkin. “It’s lovely to meet you, Jesse. I’m not sure if Alex told you, but I’m her best friend. We’ve known each other since kindergarten.”

“That’s a fucking long time.”

Harper wilts over her cup. “I guess that’s one way to put it.”

He doesn’t notice. “So, you guys are pretty tight? What do you think of Alex?”

The sidewalk is packed with pedestrians, bicycles, and briefcases. But, Alex is one hundred percent focused on whatever this is, mostly because it’s happening across her lap and it involves her name.

Harper eyes Jesse warily. “How do _you_ know Alex? I’ve never even heard her talk about you.”

He lifts a shoulder. “We’re new friends.”

Harper seems to wait for more of an explanation, but gives up when he burps. She lifts her plastic spoon to her lips. “Alex and I have been friends for so long that answering such a broad question like,” she deepens her voice, “’what do you think of Alex’ would be nearly impossible, and take about two weeks.”

“Just summarize it or some shit. Like, how would you describe her?”

Alex palms the side of her face. Yeah, she likes when she’s the center of conversation, but not when it’s drawn out and awkward and really random. “Does this have a point?”

Jesse frowns. “I’m trying to make small-talk.”

Alex can almost feel Harper go into full-on peace-keeper-mode, patting Alex on the knee with a nervous chuckle. “Right, so, how would I describe Alex?” She pops another scoop of yogurt in her mouth. “The most Facebook-condensed version I can think of is…she’s a stubborn, outgoing…snarky, apathetic… adorable sociopath.”

Alex’s fro-yo has been bye-bye for a while now, so she’s gnawing on the end of her spoon when she smiles. “Aww, that’s so sweet.”

Harper claps in excitement. “I know, I didn’t even mention how you’re a slob or at times an absolute menace to all living things in your general vicinity.”

“Nailed it.” Alex sighs contentedly.

Jesse’s shaking his head as he bites into his second hot dog, spilling relish over his knuckles.

Harper pointedly coughs. “Okay, Jesse. How would you describe Alex?”

He takes his time chewing over his food and swallowing. His gaze shifts from across the street to Alex’s face. “I guess she’s pretty awesome.”

A loopy balloon animal of giddiness inflates inside of her, and she’s got her top lip between her teeth to keep from grinning like a deranged clown.

Harper just mutters to herself, “Mine was way better.”

That’s debatable.


	4. Bucket of Water

The sub shop is on Harper’s route home, so she tags along until about two streets over. Harper’s candy-themed plastic watch says it’s almost six-thirty, which means it’s time for her to make dinner for her parents.

“They’re probably waiting for me now, sharing meaningful glares as they fight over the newspaper,” Harper says. “If I don’t get back soon, the apartment will look like one of my papier-mâché crafts exploded.”    

Alex never knows how to respond when Harper talks about her bizarre home life. Plus, the train got so packed that she was like pasted to Jesse’s side, and he was saying funny things in her ear the whole time, and she’s kind of zoned Harper out.

Alex just nods. “Thanks for the fro-yo, Harper.”

Jesse has wandered over to a coin-operated magazine bin, drumming on the metal top like it’s a bongo.

“No Problem,” Harper says. Now _she_ sounds distracted, kind of analyzing Alex. She crosses her arms. “You look _too_ happy.”

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.”

“I am well aware that it would be an excellent thing for most people to look over-the-moon joyous and fancy-free. And, it would be a nice thing for you too, if it wasn’t because of _that_ over _there_.”

“His name is Jesse,” Alex says.

She can’t hear his drum solo anymore. When she glances over, he’s talking to some chick in skinny jeans, heels, and a fancy sweater. Alex can only see the back of her head, but the way Jesse’s standing and smirking make it look like he’s flirting.

“Look,” Harper says. Alex _is_ looking. Harper drapes her arm over Alex’s shoulder in a very _Full House_ kind of way, and sighs. “You know what really captures this particular quandary? The classic TLC song _Waterfalls_ : ‘Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Just stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to. I know….’”

Jesse leans just slightly closer to this skank, biting his lower lip, and Alex has to turn around before she accidentally zaps a gorilla face on the chick’s stupidly shapely figure.

“Got it, Harper: avoid waterfalls, rivers are cool, always swim with a buddy,” Alex says. “You’re going to be late.”

Harper throws her arms up. “That is not at all what I said.”

“Dude, it’s called the Spark Notes version.”

Harper laces her fingers together, titling her head to one side. “It’s called not listening. Alex, I don’t know any other way to say this to you, so I apologize for sounding crass. But….” She ushers Alex under the awning of a closed flower shop. “As I said before, Jesse is a grownup. I have no idea where you guys met or how, but you say you like him. And, well, grownups tend to like to do _grownup_ things with other _grownups_.”

Alex presses a finger to her temple. “For god’s sakes, Harper, please stop saying that word. I feel like I’m watching some sort of Barney PSA on stranger danger. And this isn’t really the way I wanted to tell you, but between you and me, I’ve already done…adult things.”

“Alex Russo!”

“Harper Finkle!” she says just as aghast.

“With Jesse?”

“No!” Alex says. She doesn’t tag on how Jesse’s pretty much turned her down more than once. Looking over her shoulder, she sees he’s now chatting up a red head in an A-line dress carrying a massive Kate Spade tote bag.

Harper pokes Alex’s stomach. “With Dean?”

Alex nods.

“Is that why he broke up with you?” Harper fiddles with the carousel charm on her necklace.

“Wow, Harper, you think I’d be _that_ bad at it? Just because I’m not the most warm, nurturing person in the world doesn’t mean I can’t do a thing or two with this pretty mouth. And for your information, I can….”

Harper clamps her hands over her ears, mumbling “la, la, la, la” until Alex tells her to stop.

“Good grief, that’s not what I meant. It’s just like what they say in health class, you know, like a guy will leave after he gets what he wants.”

Alex feels way less insulted. “Dean wasn’t like one of those guys. It just didn’t work out.”

Harper pats Alex’s shoulder. “But, is that why you were so down about the breakup? Because he was your first? They talked about that in health class too, and it’s apparently supposed to be pretty heavy.”

Alex can’t believe she’s having this kind of talk right out in the open with a girl who can’t bear to say the word “sex.” She’s pretty sure telling Harper that Dean wasn’t her first would put everyone’s ears in a five mile radius in jeopardy of bleeding out from all of the shocked shrieking. “I guess it was part of the reason.”

“Oh, Alex, you should have told me. I would have understood.” Harper pulls Alex into a hug. “Or I at least would have read the chapter about it in a parenting book and then understood. You can’t keep all that bottled up inside.”

Alex claps Harper on the back to wrap this whole thing up because Jesse’s been unsupervised for long enough, and she wants to get him somewhere safe before he’s carried away by a gang of big breasted strippers. It’s New York, so you never know. “Thanks, Harper. I promise to let you know if anything else happens. Now I seriously think you’re going to be late.”

Harper jerks back, startled. “Oh, no! See ya!”

She darts through an Asian family, apologizes and runs off.

Alex scratches at an itchy spot on her wrist and sees Jesse waiting alone with a cigarette.

“What’s up with her?”

“Dinner plans or something,” Alex says.

“You okay?”

She realizes she’s staring at the sidewalk, acting all pouty like someone’s annoying jealous girlfriend. “I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with.”

They walk to the back of the sub shop by the dumpster where no one else is mingling or paying any attention to, and she brings her wand out.

“We have to be like touching in some way for this to work. And no, I’m not trying to hit on you.” It comes out way more serious than she’d meant it to, and he looks almost hurt as he stomps his cigarette out.

He places a hand on her lower back.

She shivers despite herself, hesitates. Then she twirls her wand, and they appear in her bedroom.

Justin’s stationed at her desk, surrounded by a nauseatingly gigantic collection of books. “Did you guys have fun?”

“Whatever,” Alex says. He sounds way too calm and collected to be healthy for a guy who alphabetizes his vitamins.

Justin moves her desk chair to face them with the wizard computer in his lap. “Good to hear. Now, I think you’ll need to sit down. We’ve got a fish to fry so big Hemingway is writing about it from the grave.”

Alex figures that Jesse looks just as confused as she does, because Justin groans something about literacy. “Just sit down.”

She plops down on the edge of her bed, and Jesse follows along.

“Okay,” Justin says. “What do you want first, the decent news or the bad news?”

“Bad,” Jesse says.

Justin freezes with a sheepish expression on his face. “Uh, well, it’s more dramatic if I do it the other way around.”

“Justin!” Alex says.

“Sorry.” He sets the laptop down and rests the spell book on his knees. “So, after hours of research, cross-referencing sources on universe crossing, and trying to figure out which page smelled the most like potato chip grease and pickles, I was able to find where Alex got her spell.”

Justin brings the book to Alex. The place looks vaguely familiar. Jesse curiously leans over, and his knee brushes hers, and she doesn’t hate it.

“Considering the nature of our situation, I am positive that the spell is one of these three.” He points to each with a kind of condescending confidence that reminds her of how much Justin acts like a high school teacher-in-training.

“However, Alex was incorrect in assuming it was written in Latin. Aside from the deductions I made earlier, all three of these spells are similar in that they are transcribed in an ancient wizard language that dates back to the Celtic druids. Currently, there is only one text that would translate these, and that book is located in one of the libraries in NYU.”

“Great. My life sounds like an Indiana Jones movie,” Alex says. Not everything he explained exactly registered with her or whatever, but she got the highlights. “What’s the decent news?”

“That _was_ the decent news.” He places the book on her desk and plucks the laptop back up. “I was checking my wizard email, and noticed a mass message to all wizards in the city. Surprisingly enough, I learned something new today. When a wizard takes a fictional character from any medium into the real world, the wizard counsel is alerted of this immediately via an alarm system. The wizard is allowed twenty-four hours with said fictional character before….”

“Stop calling me that,” Jesse says. He’s been squirming this whole time, and he seems tense.

Justin swallows nervously. “My apologies. So, the wizard is allowed a limited time with the…teleported individual before the wizard counsel receives a second warning. At this stage, the sheltering of this person is considered a violation. I can’t find any clear answers as to why, but I’m pretty sure if it wasn’t a violation we’d have approximately 3,000 Ryan Goslings circa _The Notebook_ going around, paddling boats in old-timey hats, talking about birds.” He shakes his head. “Even though interacting with teleported individuals appears common enough to warrant correctional measures, I can’t find any data on if and/or how the universe that is left behind is altered. I don’t even know whether time passes in the same frequency. The only other information I’m aware of it is that if the wizard does not return the individual, any and all wands used around them will act like a GPS system for the wizard counsel to find…and…terminate them.”

Jesse lurches forward, his knee colliding into her thigh, and she glares at the joint like its conspiring against her. “Yo, terminate?”

“Hey, let’s focus on the positives,” Alex says. She slaps a smile on her face.

“As long as we don’t use our wands near Jesse, the wizard counsel will not find and…murder him.” She shrugs. “Justin can go down to that book renting place tomorrow morning, figure out the spell, and we’ll only need to use magic to send him home.”

“That is very true.” Justin closes his computer, sliding the chair further back to the desk like he’s anticipating something. “If we don’t use wands around Jesse, he is completely safe. Unfortunately, this particular NYU library is under construction…and won’t be accessible for…a week. Eight days, to be precise.”

Alex can feel Jesse relax as he rubs a hand down his face. “I can live with that.”

Justin’s eyebrows shoot up to an almost cartoonish degree. “Really? Well, this turned out to be a much more civil discussion than I’d anticipated. Whew.” He chuckles. “So, I’m going to go get some grub. You guys hungry?”

Alex honestly isn’t mostly because her stomach is currently digesting the idea of Jesse staying for another eight days and how he doesn’t seem mad or anything.

“Nah, I’m pretty tired,” Jesse says. He nods to Alex. “Is it cool if I just crash?”

She’s not sure why he’s asking her for permission, but Justin apparently does because he’s standing with a girlish hand on his hip.

“Whoa there, buddy. If you’re going to be staying here, you’re not shacking up with my sixteen-year-old little sister. You can stay in my room on my roll-up cot I got for Boys Scouts.”

Jesse shakes his head, clearly not having it. “Yo, I am not staying in your room, man. You’ve been throwing creepy-ass looks at me, and I don’t know what kind of shit you’re into. Just cause you’re not using your wand for magic shit doesn’t mean you can’t use it for like prison stuff while I’m asleep.”

Alex has literally never seen Justin more disgusted, and that includes the time that leprechaun puked corn beef stew in his hair. She’d usually let Justin flounder in this mess, kind of like the vomit incident. But, she’ll help him out for like once. And really, getting repeatedly rejected by one of her all-time favorite characters has kind of dumped a bucket of water on any bunking-up excitement.

“Jesse, I can vouch for him. He definitely plays for the same team you’re on. And his floor is carpeted, so you’ll probably be more comfortable there anyway.”

Justin is in front of her in a flash, jerking his chin to the side of her room by her closet like he wants to speak in private. She moves to stand, but Jesse grabs her shoulder.

“Yo, I’m sick of all this side-conversation shit going on all the time. I feel like a fucking kid who doesn’t know his parents are splitting up and everyone’s talking like around him like little bitches.”

Alex nods. “That’s fair.”

Justin glances at Jesse then whispers to Alex, “Are you alright?”

Jesse holds out his hands. “Side-conversation, bitch.”

“Justin, I’m cool. I woke up at flipping eight-something in the morning, and I don’t feel like arguing with you.”

Jesse lightly nudges her side. “Yo, I don’t know if you’re pissed at me or something, but I’d straight-up feel better if I slept in here.”

She is seriously getting sick of talking about this. “Why don’t I just sleep on the cot, and Jesse can take my bed?”

“Alex, did you eat another spoiled bean burrito from Frankie’s?” Justin palms her forehead. “Did you get Mono from a street urchin?”

She stands. “Attention everyone in this room: I am totally fine. And I’m going to get Justin’s stupid camping stuff.”

Alex ambles out of the room without another word, retrieves the thin, partly-inflated mat and matching sleeping bag from under his bed, and arranges them on the rug portion of her hardwood floor.

She gets ready for bed quickly, changing into a tank top and long flannel pants in the bathroom, and pulls her hair up into a ponytail. Justin lets her know he told mom, dad, and Max that she’d already eaten with Harper and is messing around on her computer in her room. He also asks if he’s sure she feels okay like five more times, and she has to throw her bottle of face wash at him for him to finally leave her alone.

Jesse’s under the covers on his back when she slides through the door, and she switches off the light.

She wriggles into the sleeping bag, wrestles with her pillow a little, and desperately attempts to get comfortable on this stupid excuse for a cot.

“You seriously sleeping on the floor?”

Hearing his voice in the darkness of her room is like a jolt to all her pulse points, and she really wishes he was passed out already.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Why are you pissed at me?”

“I’m not.”

“Fuck that. You’re in a fucking nylon bag on your own bedroom floor.”

Alex adjusts the zipper under her arm. “I just want to sleep, alright?”

She can hear the sheets make a series of swooshing sounds until he’s still. Then all she can hear are the noises of nightlife and car horns that chirp her closer to dreamland like industrial crickets. That would actually make a pretty sweet painting.

 


	5. Huh? Sounds Like Someone Needs to Run Errands.

The only cereal left in the pantry is Raisin Bran, and Alex wants to break down into tears. She got maybe four hours of sleep last night, and her neck hurts like when she lays on the couch for too long, and she’s starving. Cereal is her go-to meal for anytime of the day, which might be why they’re out of all kinds edible. Her stomach has decided toast and/or instant apple cinnamon oatmeal sound gross, and she wonders what Jesse would want. Doesn’t he like pancakes?

“Who doesn’t?” She’s talking to herself, but whatever, she’s hungry.

Yanking the fridge door ajar, she decides if she’s up this early she might as well cook or whatever. It’s been a while since she made something that wasn’t a PB & J. But, using pans and like ingredients that don’t come in jars sounds saner than watching Jesse sleep. So, she fries up a couple of eggs, makes pancakes from a box, and uses the plastic spinning thing her dad ordered on T.V. to microwave some bacon. Luckily her parents are still asleep because she’s sure she’d have another hand on her forehead if they caught her using the gas stove for non-pyro-related things. To cover up the evidence, she actually cleans dishes before spraying the kitchen down with an almost toxic amount of lemon air freshener.

Since it’s suspicious to have two plates of food, she heaps everything onto one. She grabs a glass of orange juice, two forks, and quietly pads up the stairs, back to her room.

Jesse’s sitting up in bed, fully dressed with a large book in his lap. It’s her yearbook from last year. He looks up and smiles. “Yo, you made me breakfast?”

She settles down next to him with a leg tucked underneath her, brandishing a fork in each hand. “I made _us_ breakfast.”

“Sweet,” Jesse says. He takes his utensil and cuts out a huge wedge of syrup-drenched pancake.

She takes a slice of bacon.

Jesse gets a forkful of scrambled eggs, drizzled in a green sauce. He tentatively tastes it, and grins. “Green chili.”

Alex stabs a bite of everything because it makes kind of a McGriddle in her mouth, which would be so boss with some French fries right about now, but she can’t use her wand. “I saw it in the cupboard, and I thought, you know, why not?”

“It’s awesome. Thanks,” he says.

She licks the syrup off the points of her fork and absently taps it against her hand. “Why were you looking at my year book?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t know where you went, and like, I guess I started thinking about high school and shit. It was on your dresser.”

She sips some orange juice, and hands him the glass. “What was Walt like as a teacher?”

Jesse snorts. “Uptight as shit. He gave a ton of homework and like talked the whole class. We barely did any of like the cool experiment shit that the other teachers did. It’s like he just wanted to show off how much of a giant nerd he was and fucking blab about science. Justin kind of reminds me of Mr. White. You know, like before the cancer and crystal and murder.”

Alex laughs. “Oh god, _please_ don’t tell him that. Walt is his favorite character.” She winces. “Walt is Justin’s favorite…person. I mean his favorite person on the…show. I’m just gonna shut up before you start to feel like a talking sponge again.”

“Appreciate it,” he says with a mouthful of bacon, kind of smiling. “You got a favorite?”

She gives him a dead stare. “Yeah, he’s a skinny guy with a cute face who wears clothes big enough to like smuggle sacks of potatoes in, and…” she sets her fork down on the empty plate, “he’s like super cool, but he doesn’t know it.”

She picks at some lint on the strap of her tank top because she doesn’t want to look at him, and also lint is stupid. “What’s your favorite kind of cereal?”

“Cap’n Crunch.”

He doesn’t ask for hers, which like breaks the law of cereal small talk. Then she notices he’s staring at her expectantly. Oh.

“Cap’n Cook, right?” She squints. “I thought you hate when I make references to your life.”

“It’s called a test. _And_ ya failed, bitch.”

His tone is light, and it’s shocking how affectionate he can make the word “bitch” sound. It’s like move over smooth-voiced R & B dudes, Jesse’s going to call your woman a bitch, and then, _poof_ , no clothes.

She’s kind of staring at him. His head’s down because he’s got their fork hovered over a blob of egg, trying to stab it as it slides around like he’s spear-fishing or something. It wobbles to the lip of the plate before he gets the fork in. He makes an excited hooting noise, and proudly brings it to his lips. His eyes flick to her face, and the questioning expression he’s using is another reminder that Jesse’s not on her T.V. anymore where it was totally normal to gawk at him as much as she wanted. He’s like three-dimensional. She told him stuff back in the Freedom Tunnel she’s never said to anyone. And, realizing that, pulses a feeling in her body like all her nerves are one giant funny bone that she just smacked into her desk after her fourth or so nap in Bio to the familiar bark of “Russo.”

He’s looking at her, and she thinks that she maybe wants to freeze him again. Just the idea of running her hands over his body, in his hair, possibly “adjusting” a couple of items of clothing makes her arm reach out towards him.

She only makes it to his knee, where he’s got the orange juice, and she tips the glass back to drink the last of it. “My favorite cereal is a tie between Lucky Charms and Cookie Crisp. Sometimes I get in a mood where like I only want to eat Corn Pops though. And Fruit Loops are pretty amazing.”

“Yo, Fruit Loops are the bomb,” he says.

“Better than Trix?”

He scoffs. “No competition. Trix is like Fruit Loops’ punk-ass little cousin who never fucking shuts up about his Pokémon cards.”

“Right? And Fruity Pebbles are like that guy’s older brother who thinks it’s cool to wear visors and like sunglasses inside. Fruit Loops is all like ‘get on my level, bitch,’ but no one can because he’s like the king of fake fruit.”

Jesse is laughing hysterically, and she’s pretty proud of herself because Harper would have thought that joke was juvenile or something.

Alex hops from the bed and grabs the extra set of video game controls from under her nightstand. She wags them back and forth. “Re-match?”

“Hell, yes!”

They play Mortal Kombat for almost two hours. He’s a lot better than the other night, and he’s gloating like a total jerk. She’s just positioned her hologram to snap his hologram’s neck when the door opens without a knock or anything.

“Good afternoon,” Justin says. “Alex, please shut that off. I’m trying to study, and your room sounds like a Jackie Chan movie.”

“More like Bruce Lee,” she says.

“Backflip,” Jesse says. His hologram completely clears hers. “Throat punch!”

Her ninja keels over, and she shuts off the game.

Jesse dramatically shoots his arm out, and drops the controller like he’s Jay-Z or something. “Boom!”

“Thank you,” Justin says. “Now try to keep it down in here.”

“Aren’t your parents at work now?” Jesse sits back down on the bed, bouncing a little. “We could sneak out and shit and like go somewhere. I’ve heard the Statue of Liberty is pretty sick.”

Justin’s shaking his head before Alex can answer. “Dad is at work. Mom has decided she needs to re-learn how to sew, and she’s camped out at the dining room table with a stack of Martha Stewart magazines. Her first project is stitching the elbow patches back on to my tweed jacket…from the _third grade_. She’s going to be there all day.”

“Yo, were you a fifty-year-old man in the third grade?” Jesse laughs, and Alex high-fives him.

Justin mashes his lips together in frustration. “It’s so nice having a second Alex around the house. Regardless, of my advanced elementary school wardrobe, there is no way you’d be able to ‘sneak out.’ Basically, you’re stuck here. And, I don’t just mean today. Mom and Dad are always in and out of the loft. It’s way too risky for you to just waltz through the living room. So, yeah, Jesse, you’re stuck on the second floor with this self-centered brat.”

“Don’t be such an asshole to your sister. I ain’t seeing you giving your bed up and making me dope pancakes and shit.”

Alex wants to rewind that last part, because damn it, Jesse, don’t eat and tell.

“Alex Russo made you pancakes?” Justin’s lame eyebrows are trying to escape up his forehead again, or he’s probably just stunned. “I have lived with Alex through a lifetime of mother’s and father’s days, birthdays, anniversaries, and thanksgivings, and I have never seen her cook, bake, or stir-fry someone else even a morsel of food…ever.”

Justin makes a spectacle out of looking back and forth between the two of them. “I hate to break it to you, Jesse, but I think she’s in love you.”

“I think your psycho pills need to be refilled,” Alex says. Great, that wasn’t even clever, and she knows it.  

Jesse clears his throat. “So, if I’m gonna you know, be here for like a week, I’m gonna need some stuff. I’m sick of wearing these clothes, and like I haven’t showered in days.”

Justin smirks, stroking his chin. “Huh? Sounds like someone needs to run errands. Alex, want to put another thing on your never-done-before list, and help a guy out?”

She grumbles something that sounds pretty close to “dickhead” under her breath as she grabs her math notebook from the floor and a pen, flips to one of the many empty pages, and hands it to Jesse. “Sure. Just tell me what you need.”

“And,” Justin says, arms crossed. “No using magic to do the errands for you. Under the regulations of the wizard counsel, it is considered stealing. Also, all teleporting wand spells have been temporarily flagged as ‘risky behavior.’ So, not of that either. Good luck.”

With that, he strolls out and closes the door.

A couple of minutes later, Jesse rips the sheet out and gives it back to Alex. His handwriting is pretty crappy, but it’s legible. He’s mostly asked for toiletries and some extra clothes, and she’s fine with that even if she suddenly isn’t allowed to teleport her way around the city, which she was totally banking on. The wizard counsel, with their old man beards and stupid, random spell banning, was really making her life a lot crappier recently.

She tries to avoid another gross flashback to the time her and Justin had to comb Professor Crumbs’ facial hair when her eyes reach the bottom of the page. His last three requests are cigarettes, liquor (of any kind other than some fruity vodka shit or really anything girly and fruity), and weed.

“Hmm, I thought you made it pretty clear that you know I’m sixteen. So, what the hell?”

“You’re telling me _you_ don’t have a fake?”

“Well, yeah, I do.” She fiddles with the hole-punched corner of the paper. “And, if I wear a low enough neckline, I can score the cigarettes and liquor at Al’s. But, I’ve only smoked weed like three times, and all of those I totally bummed from drunk guys ignored by their girlfriends at parties.”

“Come on, Alex, please. I’m getting like the shakes and shit.” Jesse tips his head in that flirty way she’s seen from the show and just last night when he was schmoozing on those randos. He scrapes his teeth across that dumb bottom lip of his.

But, she knows between his mouth and her, she is most definitely the dumber one. “I may have a connection with a wizard who knows a spell that could get me some pot. Can you at least spot me some cash?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says. He pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. “Shit. Most of my money is back at my house, and I spent a ton on food yesterday. I only got a five and three ones.”

Alex snatches the money anyway, and walks to her dresser to pick out something skimpy, but not skanky because her schedule is now full of conning. So, it’s a normal Tuesday.

She pulls out a white sequined V-neck, a black denim mini-skirt, and her galaxy-print push-up bra. Despite feeling like a prude, she changes in the bathroom again. She swipes on some makeup and even pokes around her hair with a curling iron. The waves are a little messy, but she just shrugs in the mirror, makes what she’s pretty sure is a Victoria’s Secret model pose, and takes her pajamas back to her room.

After slipping into a pair of ankle boots, she pulls the strap of her biggest messenger bag onto her shoulder, and tosses all her necessary stuff in it.

Jesse must be in like desperate need of a joint because he’s tossing her some smoky-eye leers. It makes her want to like be one of those mustached creepy dudes overacting in a sexual harassment video and involve some favors in this whole errand running crap.

Alex throws on a black cardigan as parent-approved camouflage, and she thinks she’s ready until she remembers she’s leaving him in her room with nothing to do. So, she collects an armful of car and sports and overall guy-stuff magazines from Max’s room, a bag of BBQ chips, some snack cakes, and a couple of Cokes from the pantry, and the T.V. remote from her vanity, and dumps them in his lap.

“This should tide you over for however long this takes. Try to be covert or whatever when using the bathroom. And if you smoke, for the love of god, open a window.”

“Fucking awesome! Thanks!”

It sounds sincere, and as cliché as it would be, she wants him to follow that up with something like “I’ll make it up to you” and like a bass guitar starts playing and he’s wearing a tool belt for no reason.

“Whatever,” she says.    


	6. Have You Finished Those Errands?

After a stop at CVS where she probably spent way too long sniffing men’s body washes, trying to decide which one she’d most like lathered all over Jesse, she steps into a clothing store called Streetz. She’s never been inside before, but several of the mannequins are wearing obnoxiously loud, triple-XL graphic tees, so it’s worth a shot.

Alex ambles over to the first rack. “Okay, I’m dressing a scarecrow who like listened to a lot of Eminem growing up.”

She wanders around for a while before deciding on two pairs of dark jeans in a size she hopes is big enough. They have a buy one, get one free deal on men's shirts, so she buys four in ridiculous designs: one red with a black and silver tiger, a duller red one with a faded metallic gold dollar sign, a kaleidoscope-like print of black skulls on a white background, and a black one with a glow-in-the-dark handgun oozing zombie guts with the words "The End is Near" underneath. She grabs two packs of boxers in the least embarrassing print they carry, which is fittingly dark grey with green pot leaves. They have matching pajama pants, so she gets those too. On her way to the register, she sees a military jacket that's been knocked down to $20. She snags it because she's only had about twenty or so dreams with him wearing one. Well, at least he had the jacket on until she'd take advantage of primo dreamland opportunities like an empty RV or finding herself in the backseat of his Monte Carlo, pre-Tuco, with the hydraulics on and random desert around them or getting Jesse flush against his futon, when she'd slowly undress him. It was probably closer to thirty dreams than twenty, really. So, for twenty dollars, math-wise and all, it just makes sense.

There’s some stupid maintenance issue with the train line she needs to take, and after waiting for who knows how long, she just walks. It takes her about an hour to get to Al’s Liquor Mart, which is thankfully pretty empty. The dude working today is her regular guy. He’s got a potbelly almost bursting out of his button down and a gold chain he’s always playing with while he watches drag racing or _Cops_ on the T.V. mounted on the wall. Sometimes he’ll pop a handful of salted peanuts in his mouth, and she’ll try not to look at his gross, hairy, older-man knuckles. She always ends up eying them anyway. But, without this dude and his non-carding mitts, she’d have way less fun weekends.

She sets a bottle of Jose Cuervo on the counter and from the way she’s leaning, basically her boobs too.

“Hola,” he says. Then he’s speaking Spanish to her chest with a wide grin. And it doesn’t really bother her because her bra is probably more fluent than she is; it _is_ made in Mexico.

Alex buys three packs of Parliaments along with the tequila, and kind of cradles the bottle in a nest of t-shirts near the bottom of her messenger bag. She doesn’t want the neck sticking out because her final destination has a high chance of having a crap-ton of kids there. Honestly, she’d rather just be in the movie _Final Destination_ and like die in some hilariously blood-soaked way than talk to T.J. Taylor.

She has to take two different trains to reach the roller rink. The place is crawling with little people, and she is seriously questioning why she’s such an amazing person today, and how beast “Alex Russo: Freaking Saint” would look engraved on a gold pimp cup. It’s what she tries to focus on when she sees T.J. flapping around in his chicken suit and neon orange skates.

She waves him over to the side of the rink. “Hey, when do you get your break?”

His voice is muffled in the chicken getup, but she’s positive he says, “I’ll show you a break.”

Sheesh, the kid’s still doing that?

“Seriously, T.J., when are you off? I need to ask you something…in private.” She phrases this sentence totally on purpose because she’s sure when T.J. hears a girl ask to do anything with him in private, he’s all over it like Max on a bag of jelly beans.

He looks at the silver glittered music note clock on the wall, and lets her know he’s got about twenty minutes before he can take his lunch, and to meet her in the alley by that Chinese place where the baseball team all got lice that one time.

She hits the bathroom, and spends the rest of the time waiting in line to play Street Fighter. Eventually she gives up and walks outside to a dumpster that reeks of wanton, cabbage, and questionable meat. T.J.’s skating his way out of the back exit door a few seconds later, now carrying his chicken head.

“Well, if it isn’t Alex Russo, here to finally ask the hottest wizard she knows on a date. By the way, you look absolutely stunning.”

“Yellow is a…nice color on you.” She runs a frustrated hand through her hair. “Anyway, I remembered you told me you have a copy of that manual that’s like the urban dictionary of spell books. And, I wanted to know if you could like do one of the spells for me.”

He’s grinning from her half-ass compliment, fixing his awkwardly curly, matted down hair. “What happened to your copy?”

“Justin found it, and tossed it in the fireplace like a total Nazi.”

“I hate that guy! He called me a fake magician!” He makes a fist, which doesn’t look at all threating with feathered hands.  

“Oh man, such a jerk,” she says flatly. “So, the spell?”

“I’ll show you a spell.”

She starts to tell him to shut up, pauses. “You know, that one actually made sense.”

He crosses his arms with a smile. “It happens from time to time. What spell do you need me to do?”

“I kind of need to score some weed.”

“How much?”

She lets out a deep breath. Even if she hates the sight of this guy’s face, it’s refreshing how chill he’s acting. “I don’t know, like enough to last like a week.”

“That will be two hundred buckaroos.”

“Seriously? That’s like extorting or whatever.” She digs her wallet out, frowning because it’s so light it’s like it just finished one of her mom’s juice cleanses. “I’ll give you sixty.”

He snickers. “I am not negotiating. Two hundred or I do the Electric Slide right on out of your pretty little life.”

“How about I just beat the weed out of you?”

“I don’t think Justin would like to hear his baby sister is buying marijuana,” he says.

“I don’t think talking is really an option with your jaw wired shut.” She’s got a fist raised, hoping to look at least somewhat legit.

He smiles. “You even touch my gorgeous face, and I’ll scream so loud my manager will call the cops like it’s his job.”

“Uh, it _would_ be his job.” She can literally feel a headache creeping on her, and she really just wants this done already. “What if I give you the sixty and you can have free sandwiches at the substation for like the next month. It’s June, so we’re gonna get some Hawaiian BBQ sauce for the pulled pork pretty soon.”

“Hmm.” T.J. passes his chicken head back and forth between his hands. “Do you guys have any gluten free options?”

“Duh. All our meat is gluten free.”

“Good try, Alex,” he says. She’s not sure why. He tucks his headpiece under his arm and smirks. “I have a better idea. You keep your money, and I’ll give you the pot…if you agree to be my Facebook girlfriend for the rest of the summer.”

She grimaces, hating so much that she’s even considering. “What does that even mean?”

“You have to change your relationship status to “in a relationship” with me, we need to take at least one couple-y photo of us together, and I get to be the one who breaks up with you, in the halls at school, when I loudly announce to everyone that you were too clingy.”

She wonders just how loud he can scream. “Is that everything?”

“No,” he says, moving closer. “I want to make out, right now.”

He really needs to be standing farther away because she might hurl.

He takes another step towards her. “Do you want the stuff or not?”

She groans. “Fine.”

His face brightens like the creepiest elf in the world. “For real?”

Alex thinks she should probably take this opportunity to bail. She can go find some other extremely hot meth-head with a heart of gold who has his own damn stash of weed. Though he probably wouldn’t be funny or immature in a way she finds comforting on a weird level or be as completely and utterly amazing as Jesse. She really does like him. Crap.

She shuts her eyes tight, and waves him forward. “Just do it.”

He actually physically tilts her face to the side before he mashes his chapped lips against hers, and she can feel something that tastes like Cheetos push into her mouth. It’s his tongue and it’s very much touching her tongue in sluggish, too-much licks. This is almost so much to handle that she misses the felt wing sliding down her shirt until it’s handling _her_. He clearly has never gotten this far before because he squeezes too hard like her bra is a freaking Nerf football or something. The other wing is on her neck when she hears a mechanical “ting.” It goes off a couple more times before he pulls away.

She aggressively wipes her mouth over and over while he checks the beeper on his hip. _Oh god_ , she just kissed a guy who still owns a beeper…and it was _T.J._

His face is fairly red and he looks grossly satisfied with himself. “I guess that was sufficient. Now, you wanted coke, right?”

“No!” she says. Who is this guy? “I said I needed weed to last me a week.”

T.J. shrugs like it doesn’t make a difference. He flexes his fingers a few times and, in a blue fog, a plastic bag of pot materializes along with a decent amount of rolling papers.

She’s honestly impressed. “How did you do that?”

“What?” He eyes her questioningly. “I used hand magic. It takes way less time than reciting dumb spells. Also, for the under-the-shirt-action, I threw in a little extra magic. The stuff is completely parental-proof. It has no smell whatsoever.”

She hides the stash in her purse, wondering why the phrase “hand magic” is bothering her so much. “I had a quiz today!”

T.J. rolls his sleeve up to look at his watch. “Well, I have a meatball Hot Pocket waiting for me. Hold still, and smile.” He pulls his cellphone from a vague area she doesn’t want to question and snaps a picture of them with his arm around her shoulder.

He yells “profile worthy” as he shuffles back inside.

She shudders violently, kicks the dumpster, and spits a few times. Taking in a large amount of air, she walks back to the street and hopes she’s earned enough good-freaking-karma to not get grounded for missing her quiz. Yeah, right.

 


	7. Throwin' Shapes

Alex storms up the loft’s spiral staircase as she aggressively eats the melted end of a Milky Way Bar. She was so focused on her role as Patron Saint of Jesse Pinkman that she didn’t realize she hadn’t stopped to eat until she was a block away, and her only option was newspaper stand candy. And, this is a perfect example of why being a good person is bad for your health.

She sucks the last of the chocolate from her fingertip and flings open her bedroom door. Justin’s perched on the edge of her bed, jotting something down on a legal pad. Jesse is standing with his head in his hands.

“But, on an average day, what specifically does he do during down time in the super lab?” Justin stops writing. “Is he grumpy and complaining or completely silent? How many mugs of coffee do you think he primarily consumes?”

Alex dramatically drops her purse on the floor with a loud thud. “Guess who got grounded for two weeks, and according to dad, is on a downward path that can only lead to prison?”

She’s expecting something sarcastic or maybe even a chuckle, not a close-up of the front of Jesse’s jacket. His arms are around her lower back and she’s like a foot in the air when she fully understands Jesse’s hugging the shit out of her like they’re in some sort of rom-com airport hug.

“Yo, your brother is a total dick,” Jesse says. “Like never leave ever again.”

Her face is about shoulder-level, and he’s all kinds of warm. It’s taking everything in her to not slide her fingers in his hair and to ignore how her skirt is hiked up just enough to have her crotch crushed against him enough to practically get pregnant, and it’s scary embarrassing how her brain is telling her stupid junk like they’re even. No, she is determined to be mad at him.

“Put me down.” She definitely just sounded like a five-year-old being pulled away from the bike section at Target, and she wants to die.

Once her boots meet carpet again, she storms as far away from him as possible. Okay, so she’s still apparently going with the whole kid-in-Target kind of pouting-angry. Her room’s isn’t too big, so she has to stop her huffed marching once she gets to the wall by her closet. She leans back against it, and kicks her shoes off, chucking them to the empty corner of her room.  

“Someone is in a bad mood,” Justin says. “Is it because you flaked on another quiz, or are you and T.J. not working out?”

She covers her face. “How do you know even know about that already?”

“Well, I personally haven’t been online all day with the quiz and….”

“And not shutting the fuck up. This asshole has been asking me weird, personal shit about Mr. White for like hours,” Jesse says. He’s sitting on her desk, looking sulky, glaring at Justin in a way that makes Alex proud. “Like how the hell am I supposed to know how much coffee Mr. White drinks in a day? Shit.”

“There’s just so much to ask about all the minute by minute details we don’t see. You can’t blame a guy for simple, completely normal curiosity about a complex, and interesting character.” Justin brushes something from his notepad. “Anyway, I just got a text from Zeke saying he saw on Facebook that you are officially in a relationship with T.J. Taylor.”

Alex is having a weirdly hard time thinking of an explanation about T.J. that doesn’t involve T.J.’s hands under her top or illegal drugs. Really, she’s had more than her share of smug, nerdy wizards already. So, kicking him out sounds pretty solid.

She drags Justin to his feet, shoves him to the door, and manages to come up with a lame excuse. “T.J. is blackmailing me because he’s still pissed that you called him a fake magician.”

She pushes him past the threshold. “Go be a loser somewhere else.”

It’s nice to slam the door. But, she still feels like her skin is crawling with the stink of sour Chinese food and gross sixteen-year-old boy breath. She grabs the first crumpled up ball of pajamas she finds in her dresser, and glares at Jesse. “All your stuff is in my bag. I’m going to take a shower because this day was the shit show of all shit shows, like a middle school performance of _Annie_ level shit show.”

He looks genuinely concerned, and a little confused, but she doesn’t have time for it. All she has time for is more slammed doors, tearing her clothes off in the bathroom, and stepping into a scalding spray of water. She even brings her toothbrush with like a gluttonous glob of Crest in with her to speed everything along.

She’s scraping the bristles against the back of her tongue when she hears a raspy “Yo, don’t freak out, it’s me,” and she almost straight-up deep throats the thing. Gagging a little, she places her toothbrush on the toiletry shelf and snatches up her loofa.

While her stomach is bubbling with delirious, acidy excitement, she also finds it depressing as anything that _this_ is how she’s managed to get naked in front of him. And that’s not even counting her green and blue cock-block of a shower curtain.

She runs the loofa over her neck and collarbone like she’s sanding down a woodshop project. Well, she only went to that class like four times, so she could be way off. “If Justin is bothering you again, just beat the crap out of him. He can’t use his wand, so he’s like fair game now.”

“Son of a bitch. Why didn’t I think of that?” He’s silent for a minute. “Yo, what happened today?”

“Oh, you know, stopped at a couple stores, walked blisters into my toes because the trains were being jerks, and was sexually assaulted between a family-friendly Chinese restaurant and a skating rink.”

“Are you fucking serious? You alright? You….” He’s like stuttering things that aren’t words. “Yo, I’m n-not trying to tell you what to like do you with your own body and shit. But, I’ve watched a fuck-ton of Law and Order: SVU, and they always t-tell the girl not to shower after. You know, so there’s still evidence.”

Alex has to stop shaving her legs so she can dry heave. “Gross! I didn’t mean it like _that_! The guy who got me your weed is this douchebag wizard who wanted to charge me two hundred bucks. I didn’t have the money. So, now I’m his Facebook girlfriend until we get back to school when he’ll breakup with me in front of everyone like some sort of seventh grade asshole. Also, the deal included him feeling me up and shoving his tongue in my mouth.”

She hears a thud like he hit something, or maybe he just passed out from the sauna-like heat coming from her germ-killing, scorching water temperature.        

“Alex, I’m so sorry. That’s completely fucked up, and like if I had known shit like that was gonna happen, I wouldn’t have asked. I don’t want to sound ungrateful or some shit, but that was like unnecessary. Wait, I mean, like you just shouldn’t have done it. Fuck!”

She waits until he’s done making more pained noises and cussing under his breath to rinse out her shampoo. “That would have been cool to know _before_ I let a giant chicken get to second base.”

“The fuck?”

“T.J. works as the chicken mascot for the roller rink.” She lets her conditioner soak, which she never does, but talking to him in the shower is weirdly entertaining.

“Yo, you can have as much of the weed as you want,” he says.

Now, this is no fun at all. Alex can’t understand how _that’s_ the way he’s going to make up for this. She’s so mad again she needs to say this to his face. It’s like more dramatic and you know, shock value and all. She throws the curtain open, ready for whatever reaction she can get.

Alex gets a view of his back. She doesn’t know if he was already turned around or he moved when he heard the metal rings slide. But, the second option is a big enough downer that she just shuts it. “I’m about to get out.”

The door clicks open and close.

About five minutes later, she’s in her room, toweling her hair dry. Her purse is in the same spot where she left it, like he hasn’t touched it or anything, and she finds that annoying for some reason.

He’s sitting back at her desk. “Is it cool if I shower?”

“Sure,” she says. She pulls out the CVS bag, a package of boxers, and the pajama pants. Then she throws each at him one at a time.

“Yo, what the hell?” He catches the first bag, but the boxers fly by him, and the bottoms smack softly into his face. “I said I was sorry.”

Alex tosses her damp towel on the floor and grabs her remote. She lies down chest-first on her bed, facing the T.V., and switches it to a re-run of _Friends_. “Just go take your shower.”

She hears the rustling of him gathering his stuff before he walks between her and Phoebe singing “Smelly Cat.” He’s gone before the scene is over, and she blindly lobs the remote across the room. Throwing stuff is like her thing tonight. Her stupid emotions keep shifting from being so fed up with everything to really wanting to be fed up, but like thinking about Jesse. And then all the rage just keeps sifting through her fingers like the time she was seven and shattered Justin’s Etch-a-Sketch just to watch it rain down sand like gritty wind at the beach. It’s like Jesse has some sort of bizarre super power that’s stronger than her usually excellent ability to hold a grudge. Or maybe her blood sugar is just low.

Dinner is leftover enchiladas. No one questions her when she takes her plate to her room because she’s supposedly pouting for being grounded.

She sets the plate down on her bed, settles back on her belly, and lets the enchiladas cool off. Chandler and Joey are watching T.V. too, and she thinks how weird it would be if someone else were watching her on a television, like a screen within a screen within a screen.

She hears Jesse walk back in the room, haul her purse on the bed, and drop down. He’s laughing.

Alex cranes her neck back to see him pulling on the top with the zombie design. She catches his eye, and he grins.

“Yo, these are some badass shirts.” He shakes the skull one. “I straight-up have this exact one. Shit, it’s like you’re in my brain.”

As usual, his smile is like more contagious than a head cold during finals. And, she sort of smiles too.

“Do you like cheese?” She nods to their dinner.

He grabs the plate, scooping up a huge bite. “What kind of fucked up person would I be if I didn’t like cheese? Also, I’m really digging these pants.”

“I’m shocked,” she says.

Jesse rolls his eyes, rummaging around until he pulls out the bag of weed and papers. He opens the seal and sniffs.

“It’s not going to smell like anything. He did something, you know, magic something, to kill the odor or whatever.”

“Hell, yeah!” he says. His expression softens a little. “He’s still a dick though.”

“Not gonna argue with you.” She thrums her fingers against the back of her forearm. “You want to try it out?”

Jesse doesn’t answer, just locks the door. It doesn’t take long for him to have the thing rolled and lit before he hands it over.

She takes a few light puffs as he continues to devour the enchiladas.

He looks up. “Am I hogging the shit out of this?”

“I’m good.” Her stomach groans like on cue or something, and it’s super annoying.

“Sure. You just have like a tauntaun in there.”

“What the heck is that?”

Jesse smiles sheepishly. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”

She inhales deeper, the smoke like swirling at the back of her throat until she coughs. “Is it kind of like a Hobbit?”

He laughs, and plucks the joint from her fingers. “Nah, not even close. It’s just this like big, hairy animal from Star Wars, and it makes weird-ass noises. Now, eat some of this, bitch.”

Before she can sit up or move at all, Jesse extends a forkful of food. He twirls it around in front of her eyes, and she’s not sure if he’s trying to trip her out or act like he’s feeding a baby.

Alex latches both hands around his wrist, and takes the fork into her mouth. Swallowing, she sketches an outline of his scorpion tattoo with her fingertip. “What’s your favorite movie?”

He slowly moves his arm back to bring her another bite, and she eats it the same way, hands on him. “I can’t pick _one_. But, like _Pulp Fiction_ is pretty dope.”

She opens her mouth to agree, but he has more food. And, he actually slides it slowly between her lips in a way that’s so obscene and amazing that she knows she’s hallucinating the hinting of things she’s wanted to do from the beginning when he popped into the lair, hammered drunk and hot as hell in his hoodie. She giggles. “I’ve never smoked sober before.”

“Cross-buzz is like totally different than just weed,” he says. He offers her another cheesy glob.

She shakes her head because she’s super likely to do something stupid and porn-ish like overenthusiastically lick the fork or “miss” and slip one of his fingers in her mouth. “Want to watch _Pulp Fiction_?”

“Obviously,” he says, taking another hit.

She puts the DVD in, turns the light off, and sits with her back against the headboard. They pass the joint back and forth, until it’s tiny and he stubs it out. He lies back with his head on the pillow by her waist.

Alex pokes the front section of his hair, playing with the spiky fluff. She’s working a good buzz, like the kind where she wants to touch everything and it doesn’t matter what.

He laughs, but closes his eyes, almost like he likes it. She softly runs her nails up his forehead, and he makes a nice humming sound.

“What’s like some cool wizard shit you’ve done? Or is that like secret shit you can’t tell me?”

“Um, well,” Alex says. She’s trying to narrow down a sixteen year history of stuff like turning Max into a dog, bringing a cab to life, and chatting up Mother Nature, which isn’t insanely easy when she’s kind of high and stroking Jesse’s head and they’re both totally in her bed. “I’ve gone over Shea Stadium on a flying carpet, poked a leprechaun with a stick, accidentally made a genie turn Justin invisible, kind of briefly charmed my parents via casserole into letting me do magic whenever I wanted, and there was also this one time I helped save Justin’s powers from this evil teacher at Wiz Tech.”

Jesse squints up at her. “What’s Wiz Tech?”

“It’s this stupid school my parents send us to for part of the summer to like improve our magic. We have to like wear these robes and listen to professors, and the only way to talk to anyone in the outside world is through dumb carrier pigeons. It’s really lame.”

Jesse’s eyes are wide open now, and he’s smiling. “Shit, that sounds like Hogwarts. Do you guys play wizard-y games like quidditch?”

Alex laughs, because the idea of Justin trying to balance on a broom darting around in the air is beyond hilarious. The fingers of both of her hands are fully in Jesse’s hair, trailing across his scalp in a way that makes him sigh when she gets close to the back of his neck. It’s kind of nice having this effect on him. Oh right, he asked her a question. “There’s this game called Twelve Ball that’s basically Ping-Pong with more balls and faster, but just as boring to watch. We did get to eat in like this huge dining hall room with lots of long wooden tables like in _Harry Potter_.”

“Was there butterbeer?”

“Nope,” she says. “Other than visiting Volcano Land, the best part of going to Wiz Tech was getting a break from being in this apartment all the time.”

She’s not exactly sure why she asks, but it comes out anyway. “Do you miss being home?”

Just for the hell of it, she starts to gently press the tips of her fingers deeper into his hair, moving her hands around in a kind of attempt at a massage.

Jesse’s eyes shut again as he tilts his chin up, pushing his head closer to her. “Shit, no…bitch.”

It’s like he tagged on that last part just for her and her lip curls up on one side. “You know how you asked why Justin and I got kind of excited when you called us bitches, but then like we never said anything?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s basically your catchphrase on the show or like your signature word or whatever.”

He chuckles. “Great, I’m Steve Urkel.”

She snickers, and the best part of the movie is on when Uma Thurman’s nose is bleeding a hell-a-ton and they have to give her that awesomely huge shot.

It isn’t until right before the Pop-Tart scene that she notices she’s still on auto-pilot head rub mode, and he’s knocked out. She’s pretty tired, and while it would take the least amount of energy on her part to just sleep here next to him, maybe get in a little cuddling action, it feels weird doing that with him already asleep.

So, she covers him with her blanket, gets rid of all weed-related evidence from the open, and crawls onto the cot. She jimmies herself back into the sleeping bag just as Bruce Willis ices John Travolta like a total champ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of this chapter comes from the song "Throwin' Shapes" by Minus the Bear. The song's kind of about a girl who does what she wants (gives no shits), and I like it, and Alex throws a lot of stuff in this section, so that was my reasoning. I'm sure everyone needed to know this.


	8. Three Hours of Sleep, Two Bagels, and Some Body Wash

She wakes up early again. Again, as in after waking up about a million times during the night with that annoying knot in her neck and being super uncomfortable on the floor. So, it’s like somewhere in that delivery-trucks-pulling-into-markets and dumb-people-going-to-the-gym time. It’s a stupid part of the day because even the sun’s barely got it’s shit together and it’s still a little dark out. She stares at the _Pulp Fiction_ DVD menu for a good while before she decides she needs to get the hell out of there.

Alex has never been grounded and _not_ snuck out. Doing it feels very right, especially after all her Good Samaritan stuff from the day before. Lenny’s has the best bagels, and Jesse can’t leave New York without having one. This makes complete sense to her on her entire twenty minute roundtrip. It isn’t until she’s hunched behind the sofa, strategically crawling on her hands and knees with a paper bag in her mouth that she realizes her prison break was used on a frigging bagel run. She’s horrified.

It’s like she wants to yell at herself for being so lame and disgustingly helpful, but her parents are in the kitchen, fighting about the best way to slice salami. She shuffles to the farther armrest when she hears their footsteps get a little closer. Luckily, they decide to walk to the sub shop through the lair, still yelling things about cold cuts. When the door closes, she sighs around the rolled up paper in her mouth and stands.

“Hey, Alex.” Max is sitting at the dining room table, staring at an upside down box of Cream of Wheat. “Aren’t you grounded?”

She knows her best bet with Max is to avoid and redirect, because his attention span darts around like a pocket elf post-chocolate binge. “Max, did you know Kendal’s Kreamery is having a free ice cream cone day? Crazy, right? What are you up to?”

“Justin lied.” He holds the box farther from his face with a frown. “He said if I ate this healthy stuff, I’d get the free yo-yo. But, nowhere on this box is there a free yo-yo. Believe me, I’ve seen more than my fair share of yo-yos, and not one of them looked like an old man or a bowl of mushy cream.”

“Aww, that’s too bad. You should yell at Justin or whatever. Okay, talk to you later.” She moves towards the stairs as her bag sways against her jean shorts with a loud crinkle.

“Wait a second. What’s in that Lenny’s bag?” He grins. “Did you get bagels?”

She dismissively waves him off. “No. This is just trash.”

“Trash that smells like cinnamon sugar bagels and cream cheese? Alex, I may have gotten a D in Math…and English, but I know what bagels smell like.” He gapes, standing to point at Alex. “And Lenny’s is not in our apartment, which means you had to walk outside. And, that is the opposite of being grounded!”

He huffs, looking slightly out of breath, and marches up to her. “You and Justin are always getting stuff from each other, like blue-mailing each other, and I never have any idea what’s going on. I mean, I’ve been pretty busy recently with a couple of secret projects that may or may not include a hot glue gun and dad’s old gym shorts from college. But, uh, what was I talking about?”

“Gym shorts,” she says, hopping up the stairs. The bag smacks against the railing with a crisp crunch. And, _my dear god_ , what is this paper made out of?

“No, I want one of your bagels. If you don’t give me one, I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad that you left the loft.”

Alex turns to him, gritting her teeth. “Are you flipping serious?”

“I’m as serious as the documentaries I fall asleep through during history class. I watched like five whole minutes of guys in white wigs crossing a river, and they didn’t smile once,” he says. He pats his stomach with a determined expression. “If I don’t have some cinnamon goodness in here soon, I am so going to Mom and Dad.”

Alex is positive that if she’d gotten her regular eleven hours of sleep, she could get around this like nobody’s business. But, she’s tired as hell, and her wand is all the way up in her room. “Alright, you can have one.”

He holds out his hand with a satisfied smirk that reminds Alex too much of Justin.

She gives him the smaller, slightly browner bagel and a packet of cream cheese, and runs upstairs before he can steal the other one.

Back in her room, away from the bagel-thief, Jesse is still asleep like a normal person. He’s on his left side facing the window, hair sticking up, serene.

All she wants to do is wake him up. Seriously though, she’s been up for almost two hours, and the only people she’s talked to are Max and the cross-eyed lady at Lenny’s.

Alex slides out of her tennis shoes and sits crossed legged on the empty spot next to him. She considers poking him with something, but she doesn’t have any stick-like objects readily available. Her wand is on her desk, but that requires walking. Maybe she could just breathe on this insanely loud, crackling bag. Or she could like be nice about it or whatever, like when Harper wakes her up by rubbing circles on Alex’s back when she drifts off on the train.

She lets her hand hover above him for a second before she trails her fingers through his hair. It takes him a minute or so to become conscious again. He makes this sort of yummy sounding humming noise, which kind of melts her insides like cream cheese on a bagel. As he flips onto his back, she does one more run through his hair and pulls away to open the bag.

“’Sup,” she says.

He squints, propping himself up on an elbow. “Did you go out?”

“Yeah. There’s this awesome bakery close by that has the best bagels. So, I snuck out and bought some.” She takes out his bagel from the bag along with a plastic knife and silver Philadelphia packet. “It’s Cinnamon Sugar. And, it’s my favorite because, unlike most cinnamon bagels, it doesn’t come with gross grape corpses inside. Do you want cream cheese?”

Jesse nods, still squinting. “What are grape corpses?”

“Oh, that’s what I call raisins. Because they’ve had all that’s cool about them drained from their bodies and they’re just left like lifeless and nasty in graves of granola and bagels and toast.” She layers cream cheese on both sides before sandwiching the halves and handing it to him.

He takes a big bite. “Yo, that’s like the best description of a raisin I’ve ever heard. This bagel is the bomb. Where’s yours?”

“I ate it on the walk back,” she says. She even clenches her stomach muscles so it doesn’t make more strange _Star Wars_ sounds. But, _jeez_ , the thing looks so delicious. She’s able to hold out until he’s more than halfway done when it gurgles. “I have heart burn.”

He rolls his eyes. “What _really_ happened to yours?”

“Max caught me walking back into the loft, and I gave him mine so he wouldn’t rat me out.”

“Then take the rest, freak.” He smiles, placing it in her hand.

She demolishes the thing, just barely self-conscious about how he’s laughing at her.

Jesse sits up straighter. “Shit, I had breakfast in bed two days in a row. Are you like a breakfast fairy?”

Alex wrinkles her nose. “Fairies are such prissy little jerks who go around talking about how much better they are than everyone else, and how good they look in glitter.”

“You mean like fairies with wings are like homos?”

She smacks his arm. “Wow, Jesse, way to be all backwards and stuff. Not all gay people are the same. That’s like saying all wizards are the same. Dude, it’s 2010, get a grip.”

Jesse seems like he wants to defend himself right until she’s done talking. Then his mouth drops open. “Yo, it’s 2010?”

“Yep. It has been for like six months.” She licks a dab of cream cheese from her thumb. “Dude, are you still high?”

“No. It’s just like back when I was, you know, in my world and shit, it was fucking 2009. I’ve been in the future for four days, and I didn’t know it. Yo, what have I missed?”

“You mean like current events and politics and junk?” she says. When he nods, she chuckles. “Psh, I don’t read the news. Ask me something specific, and like maybe I can answer.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, I guess I don’t really pay attention either. Yo, did that new Freddy Krueger movie come out yet?”

“Yes! And it was so bad that it was good! Oh my gosh, you haven’t seen _Saw VI_ or _Shutter Island_ or _The Crazies_!” She jumps up to grab her laptop from her desk. “I’m going to stream the crap out these.”

Alex flops down next to him. She finds the revamped _Nightmare on Elm Street_ on the site she normally uses and pulls her blanket up to her waist to rest the laptop on. Adjusting the screen, she wedges a pillow behind her back. He moves around some before he’s leaning a little on her arm as she starts the movie.

They stay like that for an awesome ninety-five minutes, laughing and cringing and so close that all she can smell is cinnamon sugar and Mountain Breeze body wash.

Because she adamantly insists, they watch _Shutter Island_ andthe newest _Saw_ before she lets him browse the site. He’s taking a long time deciding between _Fast & Furious _and _Jennifer’s Body_. She’s silently pulling for the second because it involves way less car chases and a lot more cannibalism. Sleeping wouldn’t be a bad idea either. She closes her eyes, and just barely rests her cheek on his shoulder, listening to his fingers on the touchpad.

“Shit, that’s me,” he says.

Her eyes pop open, really hoping he didn’t jump over to IMDb, and she now has to explain how there’s some other guy who looks just like him named Aaron. She’s not like a therapist or anything, but that could seriously screw with your mind. Thankfully, he’s hasn’t left the website or discovered _Bad Girls From Valley High,_ because she’d have no idea where to start with that one.

He’s staring at a still of him hushing Walt after he recognizes Jesse during the meth lab bust from the pilot. The entire first season is available in all its illegal, pirated glory.

“Should I?” he says.

She shrugs, which is kind of weird when you’re practically sitting on top of someone. It comes across more like nuzzling. But, he seems pretty occupied looking at what are basically twisted home videos of his life with really great production value.

“Sure. I haven’t watched this one in a while.”

He clicks the play button.

She kind of regrets it because she forgot this episode is chockfull of stuff Jesse’s never experienced, like Walt finding out he has cancer or the recording he makes of himself when he thinks the cops are coming. Jesse’s basically passed out with one of those safety masks on in the RV for most of the beginning while all the crap’s going on around him. He watches himself through his fingers, muttering “shit” a lot.

Jesse doesn’t say anything for a short period until Skyler starts to give Walt his “birthday present” hand job in bed. His entire face looks like it’s trying to twist itself off his body, especially when Walt starts to really get into it, gripping the headboard and everything.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” he says, sounding nauseous, scowling. He slaps the laptop shut and shoves it away. “Why the fuck would they show that shit? Why would someone want to see that? Why didn’t you fucking warn me?”

“Hey, slow down,” she says. She holds his arm, because he’s seriously freaking out. “I just forgot. And really, that was pretty tame. At the end of this episode, Walt and Skyler….”

Jesse clamps his hand over her mouth. “No. I don’t, in any world, want to hear about Mr. White and his wife in bed, alright?”

She nods.

He moves his hand to rub the back of his neck before snapping his face towards her. “Yo, do they show me doing…you know, dirty shit?”

This is getting into that might-need-to-see-a-shrink territory she was thinking about earlier, and she’s considering just straight-up lying. “Do you really want me to answer that?”

His eyes widen. “I definitely, fucking do now.”

“Okay,” she says. She’s not proud of it or anything, but she has these scenes memorized. “So, it implies you slept with the lady who lived next door to Emilio’s meth lab. But, all we see is her in a bra, and you climbing out of her window, partially dressed. One time you have your pants down, and Wendy and you like, you know, start…before they cut away. It lasts like a second.”

Alex sits up on her knees, not sure how mentioning Jane’s name will go over. She plays with a decorative bead on her blanket.

“That it? And, don’t bullshit me.”

“There’s also the time you go to a strip club with Skinny Pete, Badger, and Combo after Walt gives you the money to buy the RV. But, again, it’s just chicks with their clothes off.”  

He seems to believe this. “You’ve never like seen me naked?”

“The show’s on AMC, not HBO. Justin said it almost was on HBO. But, the network like passed or whatever.” She forlornly pats his chest. “So, no. I sadly have never been able to view like the majestic 360 vista of Jesse Pinkman.”  

Jesse kind of freezes up until he’s doing something that’s like between a sigh and a cough. “This might sound weird, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone so disappointed about not seeing me naked or whatever.”

“ _Now_ who’s bullshitting?”

Alex smiles, splays her fingers across the front of his t-shirt, her palm drifting down. His eyes follow along as he licks his mouth. She gets to the hem before slipping underneath the baggy fabric, and he feels just as thin as she expected. But, it’s hot because she’s always been into slimmer guys.

She glides her hand over his skin in heavy caresses, and he hasn’t stopped her or anything. He’s just sitting there, lips slightly parted. She gets her fingers around the neckline and tugs it to about halfway down his snake tattoo. Nothing in his face has changed. So, she dips forward and kisses the ink. This is literally the junk dreams are made of, and she can’t help but like honor her dream-self by softly licking over the design. He shudders.

Alex has another hand that’s not doing jack shit. It only makes sense to slide it between his legs. She’s sucking openmouthed kisses along his collarbone when she feels him take in a breath. Her hand wanders up the inseam, and _oh god_ , he is for sure into this. She palms him, already semi-hard, through his sweatpants.

He squirms a little, which she takes as encouragement as she brings her hand up to wedges her nails past the elastic waistband.

“Alex.” He says her name all throaty and coarse, his voice like warm stubble. Since she’s still got five fingers in his shirt, she teases a nipple between two of them to see if he’ll say it again. He jerks into her with a strained whimper, and Alex rewards him with the gentle scrape of her teeth across his Adam’s apple.

His hand drops to her shoulder, and it almost feels like he’s pushing her back. “Yo, I, I don’t know if, if we….”

She’s pretty sure he’s just a little nervous, because she’s a wizard. Yeah, that’s definitely it. It would be like if one of the X-Men mutants wanted to hook-up with her, and she’d be sort of freaked about Cyclops’ laser eyes, but also totally turned on. Jesse just needs to chill.

Alex kisses his jawline, shushing him against his skin. “It’s okay. I swear, it’s okay.”

She starts to drag her fingers down his pelvic bone, but he’s wiggling around a ton.

She’s shoved away so fast that she doesn’t even register what happened until he swings his legs off the side of the bed with his shoulders rigid, breathing hard. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Alex smacks the bed. She’s pissed and confused, and her self-esteem has basically been grounded down into tiny snort-able pieces. “I don’t know what you want me to say. You seemed into it. Why are you being like this?”

He’s got his elbows on his knees, face in his hands, voice softer. “You were about to shove your hand down my pants.”

She has to grab a pillow and sink in all ten nails because she feels like she’s ninety percent ready to strangle him. “Duh, but only because it felt like you liked what I was doing. And when I say ‘felt,’ I’m like being totally literal, because, well, I don’t know. You either have some weird like health condition or you’re carrying around a very warm roll of Mentos in your boxers.”

Jesse lets out a dry chuckle.

Alex plops the pillow down in her lap, smoothing out the wrinkles. This has to be _the_ most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her before. And, she’s been in public drenched in chocolate sauce on a first date, so her humiliation bar is pretty damn high.

She holds the pillow closer to her chest. “I guess I’ll try to keep my disgusting hands to myself.”

He groans. “Yo, I don’t think you’re disgusting.”

“Then what? You feel like you’re gonna like corrupt me? Because I am _so_ passed that.”

“No, it’s just….”

Her door slowly wedges open, and it’s done so cautiously that Alex assumes this is Justin.

“Hey, Alex. Hey, Alex’s friend,” Max says. He looks completely unfazed, and dressed weirdly nice in a short sleeve button down with dark jeans. “Mom wanted me to tell you we’re going out to Aqua for an early dinner because that’s the only time we could get a reservation. And, you’re not invited.”

Alex narrows her eyes, trying to decide what’s weirder: Max being super casual about Jesse, or the details of this totally rude dinner plan announcement. Jesse has flipped around, staring, and Alex points to him. “Are you not at all bothered by a random guy being in my bedroom?”

He holds his hands up. “Hey, I might be an idiot, but I’m not a prune. You can do whatever you want with whoever you want. Plus, I knew they’re had to be two people in here since you had two bagels. Why else would you have an extra bagel?”

She’s not even going to try. “So, why is the entire family ditching me to go to _my_ favorite seafood restaurant?”

“Come on, Alex,” he says, like _she’s_ the idiot. “Mom and Dad are doing this as extra punishment. You’ve missed at least five wizard quizzes this year. Hey!” He looks at Jesse. “Aren’t you that guy Alex has a crush on from the show about science and selling blue antihistamines and burning teddy bears?”

“No, Max. That would be ridiculous. He’s just a friend I met…at the Freedom Tunnel. Yeah, he’s an artist. He draws super heroes like Kanga-man, and makes sweet wood boxes and everything.” She’s pretty satisfied with this lie, enjoying it even more when she sees Jesse smile. And yeah, she guesses she did just compliment him too.

“Cool!” Max says. “Maybe he can make a new box for my dead lizard. He is really smelling up my gym bag, if you know what I mean. Well, see you guys later.”    

When the door shuts, Jesse sighs. “Dude’s a lot different than Justin.”

Alex stands, nails back in the sham of her throw pillow, and she flings it across the room. “I can’t believe they’re going to Aqua without me. My dad is the cheapest man in New York. He only takes me there for my birthday. How are they going on a random Wednesday evening? You know what? Screw them! We can have our own nice dinner. Yeah, we will!”

She bolts to the kitchen. They left pretty fast, so the place is empty, and she scans the room like she’s going to hunt something down and rip it apart between her teeth. She settles for nearly gutting the refrigerator and scattering it’s innards across the countertops. There’s a ton of broccoli and chicken breasts and a brand new bottle of soy sauce. She gets a box of white rice from the pantry along with a can of water chestnuts, a skillet, and a pot.

Just as she adds the rice to her boiling water, she hears her phone ding with a text message. She lets it there, buzzing, as she lays out her peppers, garlic, and onions to start chopping. The stir-fry is maybe a little more than halfway done when she slips a pan of break-apart caramel chunk cookies in the oven. It’s raining outside pretty hard, and she pulls back the curtain more to see the storm turn the sidewalks a darker color.

It’s insane how exhausted she is, and she thinks it might be why she just forcefully fondled Jesse, and why she’s getting back at her parents by making homemade Chinese food.

She’s ignored another two or three texts by the time she takes some plates down. Grabbing a couple of paper napkins, she hears someone yelling at the front door. Her family jumbles inside, soaking wet and bickering.

“Jerry, how many times do I have to tell you we need new cell phones before you listen?” Her mom is wiping water from her Coach purse, glaring.

“Our phones had nothing to do with Aqua losing our reservation, which I told you in the restaurant, and the cab, and out of the cab when the driver kicked us out,” her dad says. He rips off his “going out” denim jacket. “Do you know how loud you have to shout for a cabbie to remove you from his cab?”

Max is obliviously playing with what looks like a dirty piece of rope, and Justin is shooting her a mystified look, not moving as his clothes drip on the carpet.

Alex’s mom rips her heels off and bumps into Justin. She looks up, and Alex doesn’t really know what to say with a spatula in her hand and the hot food she prepared behind her back.

“Oh, mija! You _cooked_ us dinner! This looks fantastic! Everyone, look at this,” she says, waving them forward.

Her dad pats Max on the back who is still twirling his gross, new toy around. “Pay attention, your sister may have done something nice.”

In seconds, the four of them are crowded around the kitchen island, eyeing her meal with different varieties of surprise and fear.

Max slings his rope over his shoulder. “What did you put in it?”

Her Mom pops him on the head. “Max, I’m sure Alex didn’t poison our food.” She makes an apprehensive smile. “You didn’t, right? Because really, I texted you to just preheat the oven so I could toss in a frozen lasagna or something. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“You’re making cookies too?” Her dad has crept over to the oven, suspiciously sniffing the air. “Justin, go in the lair, and check to see if any books are open on magical gastrointestinal diseases.”

“Whoa!” Alex says. She sets down her spatula. “I can promise everyone that there are no toxins, normal and/or charmed, in the stir-fry or the caramel chunk cookies.”

Her dad grins. “Carmel chunk are my favorite!” He pulls her in for a rain-drenched embrace. “I never thought I’d see the day that my one and only daughter would prepare a meal for her family. You weren’t even asked. Alex, you are no longer grounded.”

“What?” Justin has peeled his blazer and tie off, draping them neatly over the back of one of the barstools. “You’re letting her off just like _that_. It’s stir-fry, Dad, not a soufflé.”

He’s still hugging her, and Alex’s shirt is officially not dry anymore. “Justin, stop being such a food snob, and get some glasses out. I say we all change clothes. Then we come back and enjoy.”

Her mom gives Alex a thumbs-up as they head up stairs. Max takes a seat while Justin sets the table.

Justin gathers his clothes and whispers, “Looks like you’re not going to be eating with your boyfriend tonight.”

Alex seriously doesn’t think that needs any sort of response. So, she just turns back to the stove. Everyone is back in less than five minutes, and she sits there, picking at her food, listening to her mom gloat on and on about how well she cooked the chicken. The whole ordeal is the worst, like some syrupy sweet family dinner that’s so wholesome she wouldn’t be surprised if Hallmark cards started sprouting from the bell peppers.

As her parents do the dishes, she says her goodnights and wraps up three cookies in a napkin.

Once she’s in her room, she slumps back against the door, closing her eyes. “I think I’m having a slow-motion mental breakdown.” She hears movement on the mattress, and then a hand’s on her shoulder.

“Yo, what’s wrong? You were gone for like an hour, and I heard your family arguing and shit. Did they like ground you again?” He’s got a joint in his other hand.

“Their dinner reservation crapped out or something. So, they came back and like ate all the food I made for us. And, they were so thrilled about it that my dad has ungrounded me, which I should be happy about. But, I’ve _never_ been ungrounded. It feels like all weird…and dirty,” she says.

She grabs the joint from him and puffs. She’s taking another drag as she hands him the cookies. And he’s munching on one as she pulls the stuff into her lugs so hard the entire back of her mouth starts to taste like what she’d imagine a lawn mower tastes like.

“Yo,” she says, coughing. “We’re going out tonight.”    

 


	9. 7-Eleven: Part Two

Jesse has the sleeves of his military jacket rolled up to his elbows, his arms raised as he gestures to the side entrance of the warehouse. “This is gonna be awkward as shit.”

He’s been saying stuff like this ever since they were back in her room when Alex read out that text from a girl in her Civics and Economics class saying some guys from Tribeca Prep were putting on an impromptu concert. Even with weed and warm cookies, Jesse said there was no way in hell he was going, which was pretty annoying. But, they had a lot of time to kill before the thing started anyway. So, she let him get all relaxed and baked, watching Uma Thurman’s character rip that chick’s eye out in _Kill Bill: Vol. 2_ when she obscenely leaned way into his personal space, chest against his arm. Grinning, she reminded him that if she left him in her room, Justin might find him alone. That would probably mean a lame, endless string of more fanboy Walter White questions, or worse, an in-depth lecture on all the chemistry junk the show gets wrong. Jesse, not so shockingly, said he’d go or whatever.

Alex texted her friend back, and got a response with the address and to BYOS (Bring Your Own Shit). They still had an hour and a half, which she used to get ready in a hurry and then do a lot of pre-game tequila shots with Jesse, who liked his with lime, but no salt. She crammed several joints and their liquor in her purse before they snuck out of the apartment. Or really they just walked out, because everyone was already asleep. And, she’s honestly surprised Jesse’s still complaining, because from the amount of rib bone she’d felt from under his shirt during her grope-fest, his alcohol tolerance can’t be _that_ high.

“Jesse, calm your tits. Just because I was told about the concert from someone in high school, and the band goes to my high school, doesn’t mean _everyone_ here is going to be in high school.”

He runs his tongue over his teeth, shifting his jaw back and forth. “Yo, listen to yourself. There’s gonna be a fuck-ton of high school kids here. This is lame. It’s like Badger’s-idea-for-a-Friday-night lame. Let’s bounce.”

“It won’t be that bad. I’ve heard the band is like alt, emo, thrash metal and like--” Alex stops, struggling to light the joint that’s already in her mouth. She can’t get his stupid lighter to work, and she’s thinking maybe doing four shots in twenty minutes wasn’t a great idea. “If all else, maybe you can get laid.”

Jesse snatches the lighter, and starts the tiny fire in one smooth motion. He holds it out for her. “I didn’t need to leave your room for that.”

“Screw you.” She huffs smoke in his face. “What makes you think that like I wasn’t just going to give you a hand job?”

He shoves the lighter in his back pocket, mouth wide in frustration. “Oh, maybe because you’re like always fucking looking at me like you want to unhinge your jaw and like blow my whole body at once.”

“That’s super disturbing,” she says. She smiles and smacks him on the arm. “Kudos, dude. Now, let’s go!”

She strolls right in, and the place is insanely loud. There’s at least seventy other people under the flickering industrial fluorescent lighting, spread out around some sort of makeshift stage. The ceilings are high since it’s a warehouse, and a lot of the windows are cracked or busted, because it’s abandoned. And even though she’s been to a few other garage band concerts here, she’s always been too drunk to ask things like why are we partying in a place that smells like gasoline and has bats in that one corner?

Alex recognizes the lead singer, or screamer, from her Bio class. She’s pretty sure the other guys go to a different school.

She finds the group of girls she eats with during the lunch period she doesn’t have with Harper, and Jesse follows her from a distance, like he’s some sort of sullen bodyguard. Her friends are passing around a fifth of 99 Bananas, which they share for some of her pot. Jennifer, the one with the new nose ring, is babbling about the scream-o guy from Alex’s Bio class, and how she’s going to do him or something. Molly asks if anyone’s seen Todd or Amanda walking around. Apparently, no one has, and Molly walks off, yelling something that sounds like “assholes.”

About four or five songs are played when Katie asks if Alex brought T.J. Taylor. No amount of alcohol could like desensitize her from that name, and it takes every small sober particle of her left not to grimace. Luckily, she spots someone very un-cringe worthy playing flip cup with a couple of guys.

Alex drifts away from the circle, tapping Stevie on the shoulder.

She turns, red Solo cup in each hand, grinning when she sees Alex. “Holy Shit! Dude, I haven’t seen you in like three weeks. What’s up?”

Stevie hugs her, semi-awkwardly with her hands full. But, Alex only gets a _little bit_ of beer on the back of her tank top, so it’s cool.

“Uh, nothing really. I got grounded for missing my hand magic quiz, and my wizard report car blew as usual, and I’m eighty dollars farther away from finally buying my own Mustang. What’s up with you?”

“Shit, that sucks,” she says. She takes a sip of her drink, and hands the other to Alex. “I actually just got back from the Caribbean. My dad’s brother works at this cool little market that sells like bracelets and shit. So, I went with my parents, and we stayed for about a week.”

“Totally jealous,” Alex says. “Did you meet any hot guys?”

She laughs, flipping a bright blue braid barely grazing her shoulder that Alex hadn’t noticed yet. “The dude who dreaded my hair was pretty cute, but also very gay. Other than him, there were nada hotties. Though, it looks like you found one.”

Alex does a not-so-subtle over-the-shoulder glance to see Jesse standing about fifteen feet away, watching her with an angry, almost pouting expression. She turns back to Stevie, talking around the rim of her cup filled with lukewarm Bud Light. “No idea who that dude is.”

“Is that so?” Stevie smirks. “So, you’re sayin’ I didn’t see you guys walk in together? Or that I know you’re the only other wizard here besides me, and that the five foot eight guy with killer blue eyes and way too big jeans over there is most definitely Jesse-Breaking-Bad-Pinkman? Alex, don’t insult me.”

She winces. “Ooh, didn’t know you were a fan. And, yeah, Jesse is with me.”

“I am a _very_ big fan,” Stevie says, wiggling her eyebrows. She nods at Jesse, and he gives her a kind of delayed, hesitant three-fingered wave. “When you say ‘Jesse is with me,’ how ‘with me’ are we talking? Like you guys are friends in a hang out kind of way or like you’ve had his dick in your mouth?”

“It’s pretty much the first one,” she says.

“What do you mean? It’s--” Stevie pauses to watch the guys she was playing flip cup with pass by, one of them in an orange flannel shirt telling her they’ll be back. She turns to Alex. “It’s one or the other.”

“Well, we’re friends, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about, you know, putting his dick in my mouth. It’s just…he’s not interested.” Alex translates Stevie’s wigged out expression as total confusion, so she tries to explain. “Not like, in blow jobs in general, but like not interested in me. It’s mega-frustrating. He’s been in my room for like three days, and I’m pretty close to exploding or something.”

Stevie squints. “You’ve been with Jesse for three days, and you’ve gotten jack shit? Why don’t you just, you know, use a spell? You could make him do anything.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because, you’re I-always-get-my-way-and-leave-the-rest-crying-Alex-Russo,” she says. “Plus, Jesse looks _so_ hot when he cries. Shit, could you imagine him like underneath you, just like whining, and balling, and naked? He’d…”

“Dude, you’re creeping me the hell out,” Alex says. She hunches her shoulders and shakes her head rapidly in disgust. “I would never do something like that to Jesse. He’s not just something to play with. Jesse’s a real person…with his own free will and feelings and junk. And, he should be treated like, you know, right or whatever.”

Stevie stares at Alex for a second before her face goes sour. “Wow, you like him. You _really_ like him.”

“And, you got that from what?” Alex frowns.

“Let’s just say, I heard you say the phrase ‘free will’ and I puked in my mouth a little. Alex Russo uses magic when she wants, whenever she wants, on whoever she wants. This is the same chick who contemplated re-creating the movie _Heathers_ with me at Tribeca Prep just because we were bored in Geography, with, you know, all the murder involved and everything. Now, it’s like….” She leans towards Alex and takes in a dramatically deep breath. “You smell all desperate and mild-mannered and in love.”

“Okay, unless you turned into a vampire, werewolf, or a hobgoblin since the last time I saw you, there’s no way possible that you could for real smell that stuff. And, when I said I wanted to re-create _Heathers_ , I was mostly joking and also cranky because I hadn’t had lunch yet. I don’t really want to stage fake suicides. Also, it’s not like I haven’t _tried_ with Jesse. He’s seriously just….”

“What have you tried?” Stevie has to yell, because the band is breaking into a chorus of legit screams.

“I bought him weed and cigarettes and booze. I let him play wizard video games and showed him the Freedom Tunnel. I even tried to just grab him by the horn, if you know what I mean. But, he totally rejected me, which is pretty shitty for someone feeding you all the time. Like don’t bite the hand that feeds, and don’t…um, turn down hand jobs from…that hand either.” Alex nods like that’s something people say all the time.

Stevie laughs. “What? You mean you’ve been blipping this dude five course meals and shit?”

“No. I actually can’t use my wand around him. You can’t either. Or the wizard counsel will, dispose of him. I think the word Justin used was ‘terminate.’ Anyway, I’ve just been sharing my mom’s food, and then occasionally making him pancakes and stuff.”

“Holy shit,” Stevie says, grabbing Alex’s shoulder. “This is worse than I thought. You made him breakfast _before_ he putout. Alex, I am going to do some emergency wing woman business like immediately. You need this. I don’t want to walk in on you pulling a Harper and like knitting a sweater made of Jesse’s hair and crying into a vat of frozen yogurt. Jesse!”

Before Alex can tell Stevie to shut the hell up, Jesse’s already joined their little group. He’s taking shallow sips of their tequila.

“’Sup?” he says.

Stevie’s got that confident, tunnel vision, glint in her eye she always wears whenever shit’s about to go down. “Alex and I were just talking about the band. What do you think of them?”

“They’re alright, I guess.” Jesse shrugs. “The dude playing lead guitar needs to tune the shit out that thing, and the drummer seems like he’s always like one beat behind everyone else. But, they’re not terrible.”

Stevie nods, takes the bottle of Jose Cuervo from his hand, and knocks bag a shot’s worth in her mouth. “They’re no Twaught Hammer.”

Jesse glances at the floor, doing this adorable little smile he tries to hide by licking his lower lip. He grabs the bottle back. “Nah, I wouldn’t go that far or nothin.’”

“Speaking of bands, Alex was in one for a while. She played the drums _and_ was lead singer, which is like super rare.”

“Seriously?” Jesse looks at Alex, eyebrow raised. “I played the sticks and sang lead too.”

Alex holds out her hand, and Jesse passes her the bottle. She takes a long drink. “Yeah, I know, fallacies and all that. My band only stayed together for one song, and then it was ruined by Max’s magic show and our gargoyle guidance counselor.”

Stevie shoots Alex a miffed look, probably because she isn’t giving Stevie much to work with. But, Alex is honestly over the idea of tricking Jesse into liking her, because if he doesn’t, then he doesn’t. Alex doesn’t want to elbow her way into those scrawny arms if she’s not welcome to begin with.

“Way to be a downer,” Stevie says. She motions towards the tequila. “You guys want to play a drinking game?”

Just as Alex is about to shake her head, because she’s already starting to feel the room haze-up, Stevie looks past Alex and makes an acknowledging hand gesture. Alex turns to see the guy in orange flannel waving Stevie over closer to the stage where a new band is setting up.

“Uh, on second thought, two people games are better anyway. I’d suggest something with the word ‘strip’ in it, cause this chick,” Stevie says, jerking her thumb in Alex’s direction, “needs it. She’s two knitting needles and an ounce of sexual frustration away from a hair sweater. See you guys, later.”

Stevie flashes a peace sign, and dances her way across the room. Alex’s cup is empty, so she sets in on the table behind her, trying to ignore the way Jesse’s face is all puzzled.

“What the hell is a hair sweater?”

Alex snatches the bottle from him, and says she’s going to get some air.

While she doesn’t want to walk back to the alley by herself, there’s a section of especially shattered windows in a far off corner that she knows brings in a nice car exhaust-scented breeze. She doesn’t have a lighter for a new joint. So, she leans against the brick wall and takes a slug of tequila. She stays there for maybe twenty minutes, getting sleepier, listening to pop-punk bullshit that straight-up sounds like the same damn song over and over again.

“Hi, Alex.”

She turns her head to see Hugh holding a platter of what looks like the tiny communion grape juice cups from Harper’s church. A little less than maybe like a third are empty.

“Hey, Hugh,” she says, smiling. It’s hard not to smile when you’re talking to a guy with huge, curly hair and doll-size glasses. “Whatcha got there?”

“Oh this?” he says, lifting the tray. “Jager shots. I’ve done seven already, and I don’t feel a thing. You know what they say about giants. They’ve got _two_ hollow legs, am I right?”

She’s semi-aware that this is supposed to be a joke, and she laughs to not hurt his feelings. The kid’s life is hard enough growing up as the only non-giant in a family of big people (the PC term). She doesn’t need to bust his party bubble by telling him his shots are _so_ not shots.        

Alex idly passes her eyes over the room when she spots Jesse talking to a girl who’s standing out like a neon pink, mini-dress-wearing sore thumb. She’s in like five inch heels and her hand is on his bicep.

Alex points to them with the neck of her bottle. “Who is she?”

“That’s Gigi’s older sister. She’s visiting from Florida. I heard she’s a swimsuit model, and she’s twenty-four.”

Alex takes one last swig before slamming the fifth of tequila on the floor. The music is still at a volume that no one besides Hugh notices her melodramatic outburst, and he only takes a few steps back. She doesn’t care because she just found out Jesse’s chatting with her archenemy’s sister. This particular sister is throwing her arms around Jesse’s neck, and Alex is kind of contemplating cutting a bitch when she hears sirens.

All guitars shut off as the partiers scramble in different directions like the time she doused an ant hill with Hawaiian punch. She’s searching for the door she normally uses when the cops show up, but she’s being pulled in another direction.

It’s not until they’re on the street by one of the back exits that she sees the person attached to her is Jesse. This is a good thing because those shots are simmering in a banana flavored soup in her gut, and walking is like easier and harder at the same time. The street lights flash by like she’s in the passenger seat of a car. A few seconds later, the police wail is replaced by a passing fire truck, and he lets go of her elbow.

“You left your girlfriend.”

Jesse gives her a side-eye. “You talking about that bitch hanging all over me?”

She smiles. “Ooh, what made her a bitch?”

“Forget it.” He lights up a cigarette as they turn a corner by a closed jewelry store.

They pass a Laundromat when she trips on something on the sidewalk. And, _oh boy_ , there’s the nausea. She puts her hands on her knees, takes a few, shallow I-don’t-want-to-puke breaths, and keeps walking like nothing happened.

She’s listening to the way her flats smack against the pavement in a way that reminds her of a Britney Spears song, though she can’t think of the name.  

“She knew who I was,” he says. He flicks his cigarette butt, and strikes up another. “Like, she was pretty plastered. And, I started talking to her because she was the only person there without like summer reading or like a curfew. She called me Jesse; knew all my shit.”

“Not that I want to defend the relative of the one girl who has tormented me in school since kindergarten, but what did she do that was so bad?”

He slows down, letting a group of guys in polo shirts pass them. “She wanted to hookup.”

“So?” Alex says. It’s not like she’d want that to happen, but what the hell is his deal? His eyes are pretty red, though with her current vision, she can’t really judge just how drunk he is. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but under like all your homophobic crap, do you think there might be, you know, a part of you that’s hanging out in a closet, if you know what I mean?”

He stops in front of a darkened department store. “How the hell am I not supposed to take that the wrong way? Hell no, I ain’t gay.”

“What about Walt?”

“Mr. White?” He scowls. “That’s disgusting! What are you even saying?”

“I don’t know. Why do you call him Mr. White? It sounds like he’s your dom or something.”

His scowl turns up a few notches. “What the hell is that?”

“You know, like a ‘dominant,’ like in BDSM. Like he’s got you tied to one of the pipes in the lab, spanking you with that big fly swatter thing, and you’re all like,” she dramatically throws her head back, “Oh, Mr. White. Harder, Mr. White….”

Jesse covers her mouth with his hand. She licks the creases between his fingers. And, he jerks back.

He keeps walking, grumbling something about crazy bitches. They pass a couple making out in front of a bar and someone screaming into a cell phone. Another huge group of clubbers steps around them.

“Yo, I didn’t want to like not fuck that girl because I’m a homo.” He lights up his third cigarette. “I just, I don’t know, thought, well, this bitch is hammered, so I might as well ask her what she really thinks of me. And you know what she said?”

Alex starts humming _Overprotected_ because _that_ was the Britney song she was thinking about, and she wishes she had her iPod. She shrugs.

“She said I was a whipped, crybaby, junkie, fuck-up loser. But, like she just wanted to fuck me because she thought I was hot.”

Her knees have transitioned into that wobbly, infant giraffe phase, and she almost eats it like no other. But, Jesse puts his arm around her waist.

“Let’s get some food,” he says. “It’ll make you feel better.”

Alex doesn’t like to be babied when she’s drunk. Though his sleeve is still hiked up, and she can feel his bare forearm through the thin material of her tank top. So, she lets him guide her into a nearby 7-Eleven, and buy her Gatorade, nachos, and hot dogs with her money.

They sit on the sidewalk like total weirdos as she digs into the nachos. She wipes fake cheese from her chin and watches him chomp down on his hot dog. “We’d be some pretty attractive hobos.”

Jesse laughs with his mouthful. A couple of guys with green Mohawks walk by as he sips from their Gatorade. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” she says.

He swallows a bite of mostly bun and ketchup, eyeing the road. “So, I remember you like talked about me shooting Gale or some shit, and I told you I didn’t. Well, this girl talked about it too, like asked me how it felt to be a scumbag murderer. I think she was like getting off fucking insulting me or whatever. And, I didn’t know what to say, like not even enough to call her a bitch or anything, just let her keep talking. I figured if you both knew about this, then it’s not made up, and I just haven’t done it yet. It is 2010 here, and like my head fucking hurts even thinking about it. But, I guess, what I’m asking, is, why do you even like me? You watched me kill someone, sling glass, and do a bunch of other shit. I don’t get it.”

The neon aura blasting from the overhead 7-Eleven sign is making her eyes ache, so she has to cover them to seal some of her thoughts into her skull. She’s thinking about a way to word her answer when she feels him rub the space between her shoulder blades. Before he can say anything, she just lets it all go.

“Jesse, I don’t know what that chick’s problem was. You’re not a scumbag murderer. The only reason you even do what you do to Gale is to save Walt’s stupid ass. You always try to protect the people you care about. And, you never even brag about it or anything. Like you may not act like it sometimes, but you’re a pretty smart guy in ways that work for you. You’re hilarious. Even with some of like your actions or whatever, you’re still a good guy. You may not believe it or whatever, but you are. Call me batshit crazy, but I like you anyway. And, I’m not even gonna lie, it doesn’t like hurt or anything that you’re like super-hot.”

Wiping her most-likely smudged mascara, she feels him staring at her. And she’s thinking maybe it wasn’t cool to drunkenly pull her hear out of her chest, displaying it bloody and still pumping in her hand like she’s about to start chanting “Kali Ma, Kali Ma!” She’s watched _Temple of Doom_ way too many times with Justin.      

Before she can change the subject, Jesse’s hand is callused and toasty against her cheek. He’s looking at her with eyes so bright she swears she must be covered in something cute, like kittens and she just doesn’t know it. “On a scale of one to Rick Ross, how drunk are you?”  

It’s a little scary how much Alex understands that. “Probably a 6 or like a low 7.”

“You gonna remember this?” When she nods, he barely leans in.

It’s still close enough to feel the prickled stubble on his chin. And, it’s almost like her heart organ’s throbbing in her throat, like it’s just as confused as she is right about now.

“You promise not to hurl?”

After her second nod, Jesse places his free hand on the other side of her face. He kisses her.

It’s slow and surreal. His bottom lip slips between hers, before she tilts her head, widening their mouths and sliding her tongue against his. He lets her lead for a while, hands now at the base of her scalp with hers unzipping his jacket enough to cautiously travel underneath. Her neck starts to hurt from this position, so she manages to sit up and straddle his lap without even breaking contact. He does this kind of surprised humming sound against her mouth. And, the idea of them outside like this in the semi-dark makes her feel like she’s a lion, like she just totally mounted Jesse and everything. It spreads a heat through her veins that feels like the perfect mix of liquor and sleep. She starts to notice her face is unbelievably heavy, and even though she wants to stab herself for it, _she’s_ the one who pulls away.

Alex kisses the corner of his mouth before resting against his shoulder, looping both arms around his neck, and she may or may not look like an exhausted child. “So tired.”

Jesse laughs as he helps her up, arm around her shoulder as she mumbles out some directions. She so hopes she doesn’t fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is going to "M" as of the next chapter.


	10. Like an Anti-Anti-Tobacco Ad or Whatever

If their walk home from 7-Eleven was a movie, Alex only caught the trailer. It was like one for an action flick where short scenes are broken up with blackout pauses, everything slowed down, transformers crashing buildings and junk. As far as she can remember, there were no car-turned-robots, just a lady asking Jesse if Alex was alright in front of a bar with a dark wooden sign that looked kind of Irish-y, and a dog may have shoved it’s nose in the crook of her knee, and there was definitely a huge group of people on a street corner singing _I’m on a Boat_. There’s a vague dark area of whispering and stair climbing, and she opens her eyes on top of her comforter as Jesse’s fumbling with the ankle strap of her flats, kneeling at the foot of her bed.

Her right hand feels scary empty for some reason. It’s a bizarre thought until she realizes there should totally be a black clutch inside it. “Why is my purse gone?”

Jesse’s deeply and adorably focused on taking her shoes off, acting way too cautious considering she got them for like fifteen bucks at Target. She scoots closer to him to set her heel on his knee, and she wedges them off that way.

He tilts his head back. “I put your bag on the dresser.”

“Did any of my stuff fall out like when we were walking?”

“Uh, you weren’t walking. I dragged you.” He smiles. “And, I had to take your purse away ‘cause you kept smacking me in the ass, sayin’ ‘giddy up, Jesse,’ like you were a cowgirl or some shit.”

She laughs because even though she has zero memory of that, it sounds like something she’d do. Her now bare foot is still resting against his knee, and she slides it further up his thigh. “Cowgirl sounds so fun right now.”

He scoffs. “You can like barely sit up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, dismissively. He does make a pretty good point. The idea of lifting her head more than an inch sounds terrible and super unnecessary.

Alex shuts her eyes, her leg plopping back down on the bed. She just lays there for a while, listening to him move around the room: soft footsteps on carpet, plastic bags crunching, the metal clink of Jesse’s belt. Her arm is kind of sore, so she tries to rub it, but she touches something that’s not her body. It’s the back of his hand.

“I was just checking if you crashed. You cool sleeping in that?”

Her brain’s fading so low, it’s running on about one battery bar. But, there are two things on her pay attention list: her nightstand lamp is on (the only light in her bedroom), and his shirt is off. There’s also this whole thing about him leaning over her, shirtless, which she’s appreciating the shit out of. She grabs his wrist with the scorpion and flattens his palm against the front button of her denim skirt. “Want to undress me?”

“Yeah,” he says. He’s wearing this devious, filthy little smile on his face that glimmers in the lamplight, like he’s a sexy Peter Pan. “But, not when you’re like half-dead.”

“You sure?” Her hand slips from his arm, eyes staying closed a little longer, and he’s probably right again. Shifting to her side, she clears her throat. “Lame-o.”

The mattress sinks in next to her as she hears the lamp switch click. She can feel him pull the blanket over her, the underside chilled from the A/C, and she tugs it up to her shoulder.

She dreams about Jesse. He’s naked. Well, they both are. She’s taking a random mid-afternoon shower when he steps from a thick, fog-like steam like he’s in one of those ridiculous, soft-core porn cologne commercials. Except he’s all lanky muscles and black tattoos and smiling like him. So, she lunges at Jesse, kissing him. She wraps her legs around his ribs for some reason, but he’s ramming into her even if they’re not lined up the right way. It’s like her subconscious is too lazy for the nitty-gritty, just focused on mashing their slick bodies together like when Alex was a kid and made her Ken and Barbie kiss.

The sex is overdramatically rough, tiles splintering under their weight, and her back’s rhythmically smacking against the wall with enough force to shatter her spine. And, it legit sounds like a jack hammer.

After a while, she’s not kissing him anymore, getting off on hearing his husky plea of “Alex, Alex, Alex,” until it horrifyingly morphs into something a little whinier and a ton more incestuous.

Sunshine is basically balls deep in her bedroom, and someone is trying to murder her door. She has to blink a few times to register that Jesse is lumbering over to the sound and undoes the lock. The door swings open, and Justin flies in just as Jesse rolls back in bed.

Once it’s shut, Justin’s clutching his forehead like _he’s_ the one with the headache.

“Alright, I’m too busy to care about any of _this_.” He makes a frenzied, swooping gesture to the two of them: rumbled hair, under the same blanket, probably looking hung-over as hell. “I just need you to tell me where you hid my teal, test-tube necktie, the red one with periodic table, and my navy bowtie with green LED Frankenstein bolts.”

His voice is doing painful things to her brain. So, she grabs an extra pillow and smashes her head. “Go away.”

Her sound and sunbeam barrier is snatched away way too soon. Justin’s a total jerk face and actually uses it to pop her on the arm. But, it’s so worth it once Jesse shoves Justin back.

“Hey, this does not concern you,” Justin says. Though he’s standing like three feet away now. He frustratingly shakes his head. “Alex, please tell me where they are. Zeke’s mom is picking me up any minute to take us to the airport.”

“Where are you going?”

Justin is appalled or whatever. And she knows before he has to say anything it’s because he’s told her something, most likely more than once, that she paid no attention to. “Zeke and I have been planning on competing in this nationwide robot competition for months. It’s being held in Vermont. It is extremely important and professional. So, I need my best clothes.”

Alex yawns. “I hid your stuff in a secret black hole.”

“Of course you did,” Justin says. He hands over her wand. “Now, can I have them?”

“No.” She nods to Jesse who is on his back with his eyes closed. “Don’t really feel like summoning a bunch of old wizards to kill Jesse.”

“Then get up and go somewhere else to do it.”

“I feel like total crap. I’m not moving. Just go to your robot party with normal-people clothes.” She drapes her arm over her face, really wanting to fall back asleep.

“Alex, please. Joanna, this gorgeous, genius senior from Portland is supposed to be there, and she loves nerdy puns and accessories. She said so on her Tumblr. Please, I’ll do anything.” He pauses. “I’ll tell you a way that you and Jesse can leave the apartment whenever you want.”

“Um, we snuck out last night, you idiot.”

Justin sighs. “Yeah, but that was when everyone was asleep. You’d still have trouble during the day.”

Jesse drags his hand across her arm. “Please, shut him up.”

“Fine.” She sits up, and the world does a Picasso-rearrangement. “You first.”

“Alright. So, you can use a transport spell that doesn’t require a wand. All you have to say is ‘We’re not permanently together, forever, got things to do, I know you have too, now let’s go here, in spirit you’ll be there, depechkiss modus.’” He grabs her discarded math notebook, and appears to write it down. “Now, come on. I don’t want to keep Mrs. Beakerman waiting.”

Alex groans and pulls herself to her feet. She pads across her room and slides on her pair of red wayfarers before staggering down the hall all the way to the stairs. With a flick of her wrist, a swirling, gaping, mass appears above her and spits out Justin’s dorky neckwear.

He scoops them up from the carpet. “Perfect. Now, I’m not sure when I’ll be back, because it will depend on how far our project….”

She holds her hand out, recites the tried and true hangover spell, and aimlessly waves her arm over her shoulder as she shuffles away. By the time she gets the lock jammed back in place, curtains closed, and sunglasses aren’t on her face anymore, she realizes that in spite of magic, she’s still totally drained.

Alex slips under the covers, already feeling snuggly with the heat she can feel from Jesse’s side.

“Is he gone?”

“Yep,” she says.

She can’t make out what he mumbles, but then he pulls her towards him with his eyes still shut. He doesn’t stop until she’s basically on top of his chest with his arm hooked around her waist. His hand moves sluggishly up and down her side. She’s almost positive he mutters “warm.”

The next time she’s awake, it’s thundering. Her room is a navy shade as lighting flares behind the curtains like backlit bones on an x-ray. Something else is flickering inside, and it takes her a panicked minute or so to understand it’s her T.V. and not storming from her ceiling, because it’s happened before. Being a wizard and having tsunami nightmares go together about as well as tequila and 99 proof banana schnapps. And while the queasiness is gone, her entire throat still feels charred and earthy, like if she coughed too hard, she’d spit out dry lawn clippings.

She stretches out as far as she can, trying to find all the cooled areas between the sheets. Her left foot nudges something solid.

“Yo,” Jesse says. He grips her toes through the comforter. “You like play soccer or some shit? ‘Cause you fucking kicked me in the ribs earlier. Not to sound like a pussy or anything but that shit stung.”

Alex sits up, blinking against the glare of a super bright dog food commercial. “Never really been into sports. But, yeah, I can get pretty aggressive when I’m sleep. My bad.”

Jesse leans back on his hands, still half-naked, and smirks. “ _Just_ when you’re asleep?”

This feels like an invite to jump him already. Last night seemed to be going in the banging direction, though she isn’t completely sure. And like honestly, she feels like if she throws herself at him any harder, she might literally turn into a Frisbee.

She shrugs as his show comes back on. It’s a Discovery Chanel segment about different kinds of bugs. They’re doing a wide-shot of a wriggling mass of beetles knotted together over a dirt hill like woven licorice when she hears a crunching sound.

Alex whips her head around to see Jesse with a bag of BBQ potato chips, chewing slowly, eyebrows raised like he’s already waiting for her to ask him something. She reaches over and pinches out a couple.

Some guy with a funny accent describes how bees pollinate flowers and junk, and they eat in silence, Jesse tipping the bag over to her every once and a while. The camera closes in on a ton of tiny little eyes.

“Yo, you keep bringing up like flies in the lab, and whatever swatter thing Mr. White makes. Like what the hell is that all about?”

“This one time, not sure when exactly, but I think it’s gotta be pretty soon after you get out of the hospital. Anyway, Walt is like obsessed with killing this fly so it doesn’t contaminate the product. He gets so worked up that you have to slip sleeping pills in his coffee. And, the whole thing’s got like a different tone, like slower paced. I don’t know. Justin called it a bottle episode or something because you guys are in the lab almost the whole time. It’s like supposed to represent how stressed out Walt is, and him dealing with stuff and the business. Well, I think so.”        

Jesse picks something out of his teeth with his pinky nail. “You were kidding about him hitting me though, right?”

“No,” she says. Grabbing another handful, she notices his eyes are about as round as the chip she pops in her mouth.

“You mean like, like in the way you said?” He swallows, seeming bizarrely uncomfortable, and he lowers his voice like someone else is in the room. “He for real ties me up…and spanks me…and I like it?”

“Oh my gosh, _no_! I was just drunk and messing with you. Jeez.” She laughs. “Walt’s just being cranky and uptight and himself. Hits you pretty hard, but it’s just a typical fight.”

He seems to relax. “Anything else I should know about? Since you know my future and shit.”

“Yeah, there is. I actually have this kind of a perfect, foolproof strategy-thingy that will make the rest of your life _so_ much better.” She sits up on her knees though it’s not very comfortable in a jean mini-skirt, and sets a hand on his shoulder. “You listening?”

He nods, serious and anticipating.

“Do…not…go home…with Andrea.”

“Remind me who that is.”

“Well,” she says. She thinks this might be back-pedaling into kind of prodding Jesse into liking her, but she actually has real, non-selfish reasoning. If he never met Andrea, he wouldn’t find out about Toma̕s, and then things would never like escalate to the point where he’d need to kill Gale. It makes complete sense, but he doesn’t need to be bogged down with too much information.

Alex reassuringly rubs his arm. “All you need to know is she’s not someone you want to sell to…or talk with…or look at. Just avoid her…like Ebola. Trust me, I…you know, I care about you…a lot.”

“Yeah.” He’s looking past her, and stands as he drops the remote on the blanket. “You can watch something else if you want.”

Alex viciously crushes the channel button under her thumb, because _congratulations_ , she just spooked Jesse out of her bed. She feels sickeningly sensitive and offended, and she should probably just start slinging teenths of her pulverized confidence from shady street corners. It doesn’t help that nothing good is on. Or there isn’t until she passes by _Jaws_ , and flips back. It’s just started, right as that naked girl gets pulled under, and Alex smiles. Something about the mix of beach, dumb people, and floating pools of blood always puts her in a better mood.

She’s able to enjoy the movie for another three or four scenes before she’s hit with warm air. Jesse’s slouched in her purple circular lounge chair with the window open about a foot or so, letting in the smell of rain and the city’s oils waft in as his smoke floats out the other way. His head’s tipped back against the wall, Adam’s apple raised. He takes a long drag from his cigarette, blowing it out of one corner of his mouth, lets the thing dangle there as he scratches his throat. She feels like she’s watching like an anti-anti-tobacco ad or whatever, because this is deliciously captivating, and she might be drooling a little.

Alex tries to pay attention to _Jaws_ , but even the mayor’s tacky suits aren’t distracting enough. She promises one more glance and that’s it. But, it turns more into a lingering peek, and then full-on gazing.

His eyes are level with hers, and his expression is blank for a second. Then there’s a faint smile as he picks something off his tongue. He laughs, rumbly and low. “Yo, you’re fucking creepy.”

“You’re fucking confusing.” She bites the inside of her cheek. “And, gorgeous.”

Jesse taps ash just past the windowsill, eyelids narrowing as he sucks in another breath of smoke. His face is intense and grim like in the heavier scenes of the show. “I think I have like a theory. It’s not hard facts or anything, but I think I’m aware of enough shit to say this now. You know those girls I was talking to the other day? Not last night, but like I think a day or two before that?”

He doesn’t wait for her to say or do anything. “Well, I was thinking that I couldn’t remember the last time a girl was into me or whatever and wasn’t an addict. It’s been since maybe early high school.”

“I kept catching you looking at me, like you know, you wanted to fuck me.” He rubs his chin with his palm. “And yeah, you party, but nothing serious. You’re straight as hell compared to most of the girls I’ve been with.”

Jesse flicks more ash off his cigarette with his eyes on the carpet. “It made me think, hey, maybe in this alternate dimension shit I could be like a magnet for hot, mostly stable bitches. I’m new and don’t belong here, but in a good way. It’s like if you took Clark Kent from _Smallville_ and put him in _Dawson’s Creek_. He gets chicks where he’s from, but it’s never that one girl he likes, and in the first few seasons, the ones who like him mostly have weird kryptonite shit going on. But, Clark in _Dawson’s Creek,_ where no one is half-alien and everyone is like horny all the time? He’d be like knee-deep in that shit. He’s Superman. And, I thought maybe that’s like me here. Getting any of this?”

She makes a kind of disgusted frown. “Do I get that you are very old? Who still makes _Dawson’s Creek_ references?”

“Whatever,” he says. He clanks his lighter shut with a fresh Parliament between his fingers. “I wanted to test this out. So, I hit on those two girls. They looked clean and like put together and not hookers. I was on my A-game and everything. But, they treated me just like girls like that always treat me, just kind of snotty and annoyed. Then I thought you knowing all my shit was the missing link or whatever. That girl at the party last night blew that up. So, what I’m saying is I’ve decided you must be completely, fucking insane.”

She shakes her head, squinting. “You have this totally upside down or something. There are plenty of girls in this ‘world’ who are huge Jesse fans. I would know because I’ve skimmed over like dozens of blogs that literally only talk about the color of your eyes. I guess we just haven’t run into any of them. But, given the right crowd, you wouldn’t be knee-deep. You’d be like hip-deep. I'm just the chick with the wand you got stuck with.”

He puts out his smoke even though it’s only halfway done. “I don’t feel stuck. I like being here with you. I still just don’t like understand why you like me.”

“I thought I covered that pretty well last night, you know, before you kissed me and you were like cool for five seconds.”

“You say girls here like me, but it’s like as a character, which is about one step-up from using me like a toy. With you, it’s not like that. I thought it was at first, but nah.” He pauses. “You like really, really like me. And, it’s like mind-fucking the shit out of me.”

She raises both arms, not positive what to say. It’s also more than a little bizarre how everyone keeps telling her she likes Jesse as if it’s some big news to her, which is stupid. She’s never had to defend why she’s into to someone this much in her entire life.

“I could vomit back all the stuff I already said about you. How you’re like a good guy. Or I could say even cheesier shit like how you make me laugh, and I feel like I’m connected to you way down like to a bottom of the ocean depth. Like I don’t know anyone else who plays drums and sings in a band, and likes to destroy things when they’re bored, and totally understands cereal-related jokes. We like the same junk, and we give like no shits about boring, normal-people crap, and blah, blah, blah. And, you’re not a toy. If you’re anything like that, you’d be more like….”

She rolls her eyes because she can’t believe she’s about to say this. “You’re like the Pamela Anderson of my _Baywatch_ , like you can’t help but stare and you’d probably do anything to meet her. I….”

“Yo, did you just call me like a dude version of Pamela Anderson?” Jesse grins. She can feel it in her gut. “Because that’s like the most dope compliment I’ve had ever.”

“Well, more people should say things like that to you. Should say stuff like that all the time. You deserve it just by being Jesse.” She runs a hand down her face, and stands up, heading for the door.

“What are you doing?” He sounds anxious.

“I can’t be in here anymore,” she says, scrunching her face up. “You’re shirtless and like smoking and _lounging_. It’s like I don’t know if I want to eat you or screw you. I need to like stick my face in the freezer or chew through a textbook or like go somewhere to diddle myself a ton. Just do something other than like dry-hump you with my eyes.”

Jesse cocks his head to the side, slowly licking his lower lip in a way that makes her want to watch it on a never-ending loop. “Get over here.”

Her entire body feels jittery and flushed, feet retracing her steps until her shin softly thuds against his knee. It’s the only contact she’s going to make, because it’s his turn to touch.

Also, maybe this is a little lazy. Like, how hard would it have been for him to march up to her and throw her on the bed? Why does she have to go to him?

His legs part just slightly, fingers trailing up her calf.

She takes back everything. “Hey, no more of this whiplash start-stop crap, alright?”

He nods, grasps the backs of her thighs, and pulls her down. She plops down on his lap pretty hard at an angle that makes her mouth drop open. And, it’s almost embarrassing how excited she is this early on.

She leans in to kiss him. But, he cranes his head back with a smirk, hands feather-like down her sides before gripping the bottom of her tank top. She lifts her arms to let him take it off, not feeling even a little self-conscious because she’s too busy gently rocking against his thigh. He presses right back into her as he strokes the constellation on her ribs, following the touch with his tongue as he traces each star with a yummy wet heat. She reaches back to unclasp her bra. Before it’s even dangling from the side of the chair, he’s cupping her with both hands, thumbs doing things that make her jerk forward.

When she does, his lips find the hollow of her throat, sucking at a tender place she didn’t realize was even a part of her body.

She digs her fingers into his hair. “Jesse,” she sighs.

He pulls back with an obscenely hot slippery noise to kiss her. But, it’s not like the first time. It has an edgy, almost angry messiness that reminds her of the way he dresses himself.

Being in his narrow lap again feels all kinds of awesome, straddling him with his tongue in her mouth, and _oh shit_ , his fingertips feel thick and heavy right where she wants them.

Alex spreads her thighs farther apart as he slips past elastic. Before she can really enjoy his skin against hers, he takes his hand out. It may have been devastating if his eyes weren’t locked onto her face. Then his fingers curve in the fabric to slide her underwear down her legs so slowly her whole body convulses. And, she anxiously kicks them the rest of the way off.

His hand slips back down against her crotch and she grinds into the base of his palm. “Is this good?”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” she says.

He chuckles, somehow deep-toned and breathy at the same time. She wants to feel it against her mouth so she latches her lips to his neck. Her focus is hazy and wobbly, but after some frantic groping, she finds the lip of his sweatpants, and starts to tug them down.

Jesse’s stubble awesomely grates against her cheek, and it’s already familiar in the best way. “Yo, let’s go to your bed.”

She shakes her head because words are really hard with his fingers languidly stroking her back and forth. “Too far. Don’t want you to change your mind.”

Before he can say anything else, she yanks down his boxers and firmly wraps her hand around his cock. It’s like they both shudder at the same time, and he’s twitching and ready and big in her palm. She should really apologize for that cruel Mentos joke at some point. Now, she’s more concerned with gliding her hand up and down. She drags her thumb across the head, putting enough pressure on the slit for him to groan and buck into her fist. She pumps him a few more time, before she moves back, pushing the stiff denim of her skirt to gather at her hips, lifting herself because she’s very ready to make last night’s mounting official.

His grip is tight on her outer thighs, so hard it kind of hurts, and she cries out.

He flicks his eyes to her face. “Condom.”

That would probably be a good idea, or at least her version of one. She traces a nail down his shaft as a blue glimmer follows behind. It’s like the one and only thing she knows how to do with hand magic, mostly because she taught herself to do it before she’d even heard the phrase “hand magic,” and she’s not quite sure how she feels about accidentally memorizing contraception magic at fourteen. But, oh, well.

She smiles. “We’re good.”

“It’s not gonna like turn colors or fall off or some shit is it?”

“No. Now, hurry the hell up,” she says. She’s positive that sounded totally agitated, and she wiggles in his hands until he laughs a little.

“Shit,” Jesse says. “That’s hot.”

He guides himself inside as she sinks down. She opens her mouth, shocked to hear a scream that isn’t hers until she remembers _Jaws_ is still playing. This is a flighty thought, because while the feel of him inside of her is great and everything, she starts to move and it’s _oh so_ better.

She rolls her hips, circles them in a kind of figure eight pattern that turns her body all mushy.

Jesse must like it too because he’s spitting out a happy-sounding string of “shit, fuck, shit” around her name. She can even feel the blunt pressure of his nails in her back. “Oh shit, I can’t even remember, like, shit, you’re like just so….”

She laughs, still riding him. “I’m so what?”

He presses a kiss below her ear, shaking with a silent moan when she angles her herself at a sharp angle, pushing him in deeper. “I don’t want to sound like a perv, but _shit_ , you’re fucking crazy _tight_.”

“Mmm, maybe it’s ‘cause I’m still totally jailbait,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows.

He winces. “Uh, don’t remind me.”

“My bad,” she says. She really didn’t mean to kill the mood or anything, so she reaches down to get a good, strong handful of his balls.

Jesse gasps out a chocking sound, giving back with a particularly forceful thrust. He grabs her ass and lifts, tilting her in a way that makes her whimper. Shit, she’s never done this fast. She’s not finished yet, but it’s getting pretty freaking close. Maybe he can tell, because his thrusts are slower and deeper.

“Right there?” he says, heavy-lidded, grinning, more confident then she’s ever seen.

She can barely nod. And, he hits that spot again, and again, and again.

It’s not long before she’s moaning his name, tightening around him, and she feels like an exploding great-white-shark-killing bomb.

Jesse’s licking his way up her neck during the afterglow. She shifts, and feels he’s still completely hard. It jolts her like a static shock because this is totally a first-time event in her life. Though, she’s also never been with anyone over the age of seventeen.

She grins, pulling herself off before sinking all the way back down. He bites at her shoulder with enough enthusiasm to leave clear teeth marks. His fingers caress past her stomach and find her other spot. It’s hurried now, everything feels slicker and warmer, and she comes for the second time less than a second before him.

He says her name, panting, and she ruffles his slightly sweaty hair. He looks like a satisfied puppy in a kind of weird, sexy way that only _sort of_ makes her question the kinds of shit that gets her off.

Smiling, she amps up the sultriness of her voice when she says, “Good boy, Jesse. Good boy.”

Alex is mostly kidding, but he groans. The sparkle of curiosity and want in his eyes is almost as exciting as the throbbing warmth she can feel stiffening between her thighs.

She stands, jimmies out of the rest of her clothes, and leans over with her ass in the air. She pats the foot of the comforter. “Come, Jesse. Be a good boy.”

This time, he throws her on the bed.        


	11. Hello Kitty

She slaps the nape of her neck, giving this gnat mad props for somehow managing not to drown in her sweat. There’s lots of it all over her, lots of gnats swarming, lots of people everywhere: hands sloshing through coolers of half-melted ice, legs jogging in that awkward, stilted way where the sand’s deep, butts of all sizes hanging out of bathing suits.

Even though it’s god-awful humid, her bikini top feels super starchy. She hasn’t worn the thing since Molly’s rooftop pool party at her dad’s swanky Manhattan hotel where Alex spent a few hours hogging Molly’s inflatable lounge-thing in the deep end while she pretended to listen about Molly’s ex, and then flicked a bunch of cocktail weenies on someone’s arriving Sweet Sixteen party from the balcony. That was about a year ago, and she totally didn’t wash the bathing suit. So, it’s been just chilling in the back of her underwear drawer, getting all stiff with leftover chlorine and junk.

Their Cherry Cokes are warm now with the bottle giving between her fingers almost like plastic wrap. They have just over a towel’s length of personal space before there’s some other dope with a giant sunhat or book or whatever. The shoreline looks like someone sliced the tops off several blocks worth of New York apartments, lifted everyone up, and dumped them all in the sand. There’s got to be at least three hundred people just in sight. And, everything smells like a crockpot filled with garbage.

“Yo, this place is awesome!” Jesse’s grinning. “I haven’t been to the beach since I was like twelve.”

She half-heartedly smiles and smacks another bug on her ankle. “Yeah, Coney Island is the best.”

He doesn’t seem to notice her sarcasm, though he frowns a little.

“Actually, that trip blew. Jake was maybe two or three months old, and my parents took us to San Diego to visit these distant cousins who were like in private schools and played tennis and could speak Chinese. Everyone was all over Jake, taking shit-tons of pictures of him in dumb, fucking baby hats.”

Three little kids storm by, screaming their heads off while a skinny chick in one of those UV-blocking long-sleeved shirts runs after them.

Jesse flexes his toes in the sand. “My dad yelled at me because I forgot to put more suntan lotion on Jake when he and my mom went to collect sand dollars or some shit. Jake looked like one of those atomic fireballs, like the cinnamon candy that kills your tongue. He wouldn’t stop crying, like 24/7.”

He crams some chili cheese fries in his mouth. “They made me stay inside with Jake the rest of the week, and like coat him in this special baby ointment every hour. It smelled like mothballs and piss. And, my cousins didn’t ‘believe’ in TV, so I ended up reading like _Time_ magazines while everyone else was fucking waterskiing and playing volleyball.”

“Your family sucks,” she says. “One time, I accidentally left Max on Mars, and I still managed to watch all my shows and get fro-yo with Harper after school.”

He shovels in another handful of fries. “I thought your dad was a hard-ass? Like he doesn’t let you do magic when you want and shit, right?”

“My mom and dad act all strict and stuff when they lecture me, but it’s mostly talk,” she says. She dabs a bare fry in the puddle of nacho cheese, swirling it around like an edible paint brush. “They basically ignore everything I do until I slip up and they catch me like sneaking a pocket-elf into my Spanish test or putting a charm on Harper to make her a better waitress. It’s like you’ve been in my room for days, and they haven’t even popped their heads in to check up on me or anything.”

“Yeah, my parents were kind of the same. Like, I was only like a topic of discussion when I’d bring back a shitty report card or I came home drunk.” He picks up a pale, fractured chip of a seashell, thumbing the grooves on the top. “But, like, at least your parents still talk to you. I can’t even get my mom to pick up her fucking phone.”

Alex just scooped a huge glob of chili onto her tongue, so she waits a second to swallow, because this isn’t a talk-with-your-mouthful kind of conversation. He’s talking about his parents.

“Have you seriously not heard from your mom or anything since you bought the house back?”

Jesse shakes his head. “I guess they pretty much see me as a lost fucking cause, you know, given up and shit.”

“That’s really messed up.” She nudges him with her leg. “I know this is super cliché or sappy or whatever, but they’re missing out, like missing out on a great guy. As far as I can tell, they’re just a couple of dicks.”

He kind of frowns. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call my mom a dick before.”

“Ooh, too much?” she says.

“Nah. It’s a little extreme, but it’s like the thought that counts,” he says, squinting against the sun. He lays his hand over hers, running his fingertips over her knuckles.

A seagull squawks a shrill sound over their heads, jolting the girl tanning a few towels over. There’s a family under a beach umbrella next them, all creepily wearing matching blue swimsuits, chowing down on some KFC.

“Yo, what’s Mars like?

She shrugs. “Uh, I guess pretty sandy, dry, and hot. It’s like this except without the water, and we’d be alone.”

“Could you breathe there? Or did you have like astronaut suits or whatever?”

“No suits. Wizards can breathe in space. It’s pretty awesome.”

“Hell, yeah it is! That’s some like Green Lantern shit!”

She absentmindedly taps his knee, not sure if she really wants to say what she’s about to tell him. “It’s…it’s not a big deal or anything. But, you’re kind of the only guy I’ve been with who knows I’m a wizard.”

“Seriously?” he says. He chews at his upper lip. “Well, you’re the only chick I’ve been with that knows about…like the play-by-play of my life, even all the bad shit.”

He chuckles. “Meth and magic; sounds like the name of like a weird-ass store that sells like tarot cards and…well, meth, I guess.”

“We’d make so much cheddar,” she says, smiling.

Jesse goes quiet for a minute. She starts listening to these two blonde guys talk about how being gay for Robert Downey Jr. doesn’t even really count as gay when Jesse lifts his chin. “Yo, why haven’t I heard this Lil Wayne song before?”

She laughs because he’s doing a very white-guy head bob to the song playing on her iPod speakers. And, it’s seriously freaking weird seeing him at the beach. He’s lost all of his layers, wearing a light blue pair of swim trunks she bought him from Target, and his black-and-white Air Force Ones. He’d been very against flip-flops.

“It’s new _and_ Drake, not Lil Wayne.” She pokes his adorably pale shoulder. “Damn son, when was the last time your skin saw daylight? You look like a naked Klondike bar.”

Alex swears the mischievous glimmer in his eye makes them even bluer, which should be physically impossible, or at least like a misdemeanor or something.

“So, you’re saying I’m delicious, and you’d do like all kinds of weird shit to get me in your mouth?”

She props her chin on her knee with her legs tucked into her chest. “Absolutely.”

Maybe her voice is a little too gentle, soft, sincere.

He looks stunned for a minute, before he’s smiling again, and he bops her side with his shoulder. “Yo, I’m not _that_ good. You sure you’re not sick of me or whatever? You know, ready to return me, like get a refund?”

Alex feels her cell phone vibrate by her elbow, and she snatches it up to see a text from Harper. All it says is “TMI ALEX!” And, Alex guesses that’s pretty fair considering her last message to Harper was “Guess who rode Jesse hardcore like a motherflipping go-kart?” Although, Harper _did_ say she wanted to me kept in the loop, _and_ Alex had at least censored herself a little bit.

Two dudes in backwards baseballs caps start a clumsy fistfight a few yards off as a clump of children circle around them with plastic shovels raised like they’re in that cool book where they kill the pig on that island. No else seems to really care.

Using his arm for leverage, she’s able to stand. She twists her hair up into a ponytail. “Let’s get in the water.”

They have to wade through who knows how many beachgoers before they even get their legs wet. The waves are pretty mellow, and they trudge out until about chest level, the ocean feeling amazingly cool.

Alex hops along with the roll of the water. It’s still for a while, so she decides to float on her back.

“You gonna like answer my question sometime today?” He’s leaning over her, shadowing the sun off her face.

“Oh my gosh, stop being so sensitive. I’m not sick of you.” She sighs. “But, if you keep up this whole I-think-I’m-a-toy thing you got going on, maybe I’ll like pull a _Twilight Zone_ , and turn you into a doll. Just keep you on a shelf, sitting there in your thug doll clothes with itty-bitty plastic teenths of crystal in your pockets and a tiny pack of smokes. You’d still have human thoughts or whatever, and the world would seem giant and scary.”

Skimming the surface with her hands, she taps his thigh with her foot. “Then at night, I’d play with you.”

“Kinky little shit,” he says. He tilts closer and splashes her.

“Jerk!” She bobs to her feet, splashes him harder.

They goof off in the water for almost an hour, bodysurfing, dunking each other, mocking hairy guys in speedos. By the time they’re toweling off, her skin feels like it’s one giant grape corpse. He totally laughs at that joke, and she feels pretty boss about it.

She takes him to Luna Park because there’s a ton of other stuff to do at Coney Island besides the beach. Standing by the front entrance, she watches Jesse excitedly freak out about the crazy scary Superman ride that straps you in at an angle that makes you feel like you’re flying. He’s also pretty psyched about the bumper cars _and_ the whack-a-mole _and_ the massive amounts of delicious fried carnival food.

Just as he’s finally ready to pick a direction, she literally bumps into someone. It knocks the sunglasses right off her face. But, plowing into people is kind of a Coney Island staple, and it wouldn’t be a big deal at all if the guy handing back her neon blue Ray-Bans wasn’t T.J.

He’s dressed like an eight-year-old: red Pokémon swim trunks, white visor with some sort of bank name stitched to the front and a piss yellow tank top with a penguin in shades, sitting on an ice cube with the words “I’m Pretty Cool” in block letters. The second he recognizes her, he tugs his mesh, drawstring bag further up his sunburned shoulder and does a legit creeper whistle, like a catcall, except twice as awkward since she’s standing like right in front of him.    

“Oh my, oh my. I really dropped the ball when I set up the logistics of our Facebook relationship, because I definitely should have demanded a couple of nudes.” He holds out his hand. “Tasteful ones, of course.”

“Not sure what to say to that. But, it was great seeing you. Can’t wait for our breakup in September.” She grabs Jesse’s elbow to start pulling him through an opening in the crowd. But, T.J.’s spooky-as-shit super cold hand clamps down on her forearm like it’s a dead thing or snot or maybe like a wad of zombie phlegm.

“Hold up. It’s not every day that I get to see my social media sweetheart in the flesh,” T.J. says. He’s fingers do a starfish-like splay. “The very tan flesh, if I may add. Give me at least a couple of minutes to catch up.”

Alex shakes him off so hard, she accidentally knocks into Jesse. He steadies her, lacing their fingers together, squeezing her hand. It comforts her like no other.

“Dude, I saw you like three days ago. I have no updates.”

“Well, who’s this guy getting all chummy with you?” T.J. frowns. “Did she tell you I’m her boyfriend?”

She decides to answer for Jesse, because she’s pretty sure with the way he’s gripping her palm, he’s pretty close to breaking T.J.’s jaw.

Alex musters her fakest, polite smile. “This is my cousin.”

“A cousin you hold hands with?” He kind of shrugs with his mouth drawn up. “I’ve heard that’s pretty common in a few wizard circles. But, I always assumed if you were into that whole old-school, keeping-the-magical-bloodlines-pure deal, you’d go for Justin. I mean, you guys look at each other funny sometimes.”

“What?” Alex says. It’s literally the only word she can think of, because, well, _what_? It takes her a good second to remember she’s trying to get very far away from this guy. “Just because I hold my cousin’s hand, doesn’t mean we’re about to move to Louisiana together. Though, he did fly in from out of town, so I’d like to show him around the park while the sun’s still out. I guess I’ll see you….”

“Does your cousin have a name?”

A group of middle school girls in brightly colored one-pieces, nibbling on giant pretzels, wanders between them, and Alex kind of wants to tag along.

“Yes, of course he does. This is Je….” Suddenly the idea of saying his real name feels like a risk. T.J. could like Google it, and then somehow use that shit against her, or maybe even rat her out to the wizard council. “…Jedidiah.”

“Jedidiah?” T.J.’s giving her an I-call-your-bullshit squint.

“Yeah,” Jesse says. “I’m like Amish and shit, and I’m named after my great-great-great-grandfather who fought in a bunch of wars for our country. So, you gonna keep making fun of my name?”

Jesse ran with that like a total champ, and Alex has possibly never found him more attractive.

“Alex, how about we skip the part where I tell you that the Amish don’t swear, condone wizardry, or use airplanes as means of transportation, and get to the point where I ask you for a quick snapshot of the two of us? Because I’d be a complete idiot if I didn’t have a little photographic assistance to remember you in your bikini.” He rummages through his bag.

“I’m gonna pass,” Alex says. “The deal was _one_ profile picture. So, yeah.”

She starts to lead them away for the second time when T.J. loudly clears his throat, even raising himself up on his flip-flopped toes. “You know, I could always just, I don’t know, give those TMZ guys by the shaved ice stand, stalking Ashley Tisdale, a hot tip on an up-incoming actor who can apparently be in two places at the same gosh dang time.”

Alex’s features still, though she manages a weak-sounding scoff. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure if this is actually him _or_ Jesse. But, from the graphic on his shirt and the ounce of weed I sold you, I’m going to take a wild guess, and say Jesse.”

“An ounce, my ass,” Jesse says, getting in T.J.’s face. “That was like barely an eighth, you little bitch.”

T.J. grins. “I’ll take who is Jesse Pinkman for 1,000. And, for bonus points, I’d like to clarify that I knew the whole time, and I just wanted to watch you flail around about your fake Amish kissing cousin. Now, are we going to take this or what?”

Before she can say anything, T.J. discreetly displays his wand from the opening of his bag. “I’m thinking Jesse’s been here since at least Tuesday. So, this bad boy could do some serious damage, if you know what I mean.”

Alex steps in front of Jesse on instinct, teeth gritted, voice low. “Do…not…hurt him. If you even move towards your wand, I am going to gag you with your own stupid hat and scalp you right in front of the giant teacups. Understand?”

His face has turned at least two or three shades paler, but he’s still wearing that stupid smirk. “I’ll show you a giant teacup. Now, come on, let’s get on the Ferris wheel.”

She’s not up for arguing anymore, rage making her pretty edgy. So, she just marches over to the stupid Ferris wheel while T.J. elatedly follows. They only have to wait a few minutes to get on, and _he_ waits until they’ve reached the top of the loop to take the picture. His arm’s slung over her shoulder with his face close enough to her cheek for her to tell he’s had some sort of chili very recently.

Once she’s back on the asphalt and not stuck in a tiny swing with a complete douchebag, she hightails it out of there as fast as she can, pulling Jesse along. She doesn’t stop zigzagging through tourists until they’re safely on the other side of the park around a bunch of families.

Alex darts to the nearest concession stand and gets in line. “I could so go for a corn dog right now. You want one?”

“Yo,” he says. His touch is gentle on the small of her back. “Back there, with that guy, I don’t know if….”

“Can we please not talk about T.J.? We finally ditched the loser. So, let’s like eat our weight in processed pork and do some fun crap, alright?” She smiles.

He gives her a tight-lipped nod.

The wait for food takes forever, so she decides to go on a few roller coasters instead. They hit up the whack-a-mole and one of those ring toss things before they manage to find an open bench close to a dart/balloon popping game and share a funnel cake. When they’re down to the last couple of strings of dough, Jesse drags his fingers through the sugar and smears it across her face. She probably looks like Tony Montana, and she tries to clean herself up until Jesse tips her head back, starting to clear away the powder with the tip of his tongue.

He gets pretty close to the left crease of her lips, and she closes her eyes, opening her mouth more, silently asking for him to slip right in, because she’s just now realizing she hasn’t kissed him since she was delightfully jammed between him and the headboard this morning. And, that was _way_ too long ago.  

But, he stops all of a sudden, saying some shit about a couple of kids and their dad eying them the wrong way. It’s whatever, because she totally passes him like three times on the go-karts, and she feels very accomplished.

At around four or so in the afternoon, it’s too hot to be outside anymore, and they’re kind of over the beach. They go to one of the arcades, and she can practically hear her mom scolding her for playing video games when it’s so nice out. Apparently, some people actually listen to junk their moms say, because the purple-dark, glowing building is empty other than a guy with a collared shirt and a ponytail half-asleep behind the prize booth.

She gets tokens from one of the front dispensers, and picks an old-school pinball machine covered in what look like poorly-drawn, knock-off Lisa Frank cartoons. Leaning against the chilled glass shoots a cool tingle up her midriff, because she’s not wearing much. Once her bikini air-dried, she just pulled back on her denim cut-offs and lime green Tom’s. Adding a shirt seemed lame and a waste of time.  

She pulls the lever back, and watches the ball shoot up. It clanks around a whirly doohickey. “Want to go for highest score?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Jesse says.

Alex ranks up about 800 points, which she guesses is alright for a first try since she still has three balls left for her turn. Jesse isn’t saying anything sarcastic or rambling or anything, and it’s weirding her out. She stars another round anyway, spinning the head of a flamingo sipping a tropical drink all the way around, and she even cheers herself on.

“Oh, yeah! Who is having a beast of a day? I am!” It’s a little immature, but she’s trying to provoke him into _some_ sort of response.

He’s still being mime-level silent, so she glances at him to make sure he’s still breathing and conscious.

Jesse’s staring back at her, expression kind of hard to read, but there’s definitely a strange softness there she hasn’t seen much of before: a sweet, little smile on his face.

“Yo, I…uh, I just like wanted you to know that today was really awesome. Like it’s nice to be able to have a good time, just goof off and shit. It’s been like a long time for me, and like I appreciate it. And, I know you already said you didn’t want to talk about it, but I’d be a dick if I didn’t say this.”

He rubs at the back of his neck. “No one’s ever defended me like that before, without any like benefit for themselves, ‘cause you know Mr. White says shit like he needs me alive, but then he’s all up my ass and fucking calling me a worthless junkie, and he like has to have me alive to help him cook. For what I can tell, my being here is just getting you in trouble and letting assholes like T.J. take shit from you. And, you know, I’m like super grateful for you standing up for me. It’s a good feeling having someone do that for you.”

His words hit her like a spring-loaded pinball, and she’s not paying attention to the game anymore. It actually makes her kind of sad to think she’s the first person to truly stick up for him at all.

Jesse eyes dart off to the side. “Didn’t you say you like summoned me here by accident? Like what spell were you trying to do?”

“I was trying to watch what happens next in the show or whatever, like a super sneak peek,” she says. She pulls back the knob of the machine, not wanting to look right at him. “But, if I could go back and give myself the right spell, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t change anything if it meant I wouldn’t have been able to meet you.”

Alex lets that loaded sentiment hang there like a weighed-down cheese fry. She smells smoke. The ball drops right past the flippers because she jerks around to look at him. Sure enough, a nicotine-laced cloud is streaming out of his mouth.

She rolls her eyes, and gets the next ball in position. “Hey, old-timey airplane businessman, we’re like indoors. Shouldn’t you put that out?”

Jesse gestures to the prize-booth dude, listlessly puffing on his own cigarette, and the two of them exchange kind of bro-like, ‘sup nods.

“It’s cool,” he says. He braces his elbows on the side of the game right above what’s either a very overweight Day-Glo orange dog or a bear with freakishly long ears.

Even from the corner of her eye, she can tell he’s trembling a little, like this cigarette is calming him or something. Maybe she got _too_ serious and freaked him out; _wonderful._

A couple of seconds pass, and she turns her head just a tiny bit to see Jesse’s grinning, teeth about as translucently white as his skull t-shirt under the black lights. “Yo, unless you think it’s gonna get you all horned-up again.”

“Pssh, yeah, right.” She jabs the button for the left toggle and the ball levels a flap with an alligator and a shark skipping rope for no reason; 150 points. “Like you’d need a cigarette for that. I watched you chew your thumb nail while we were waiting in line for the Electro Spin, and I’m _still_ rocking a ladyboner.”

He coughs hard enough to rattle the machine, and the dumbass silver devil jumps completely over the toggles like a crack-head subway turnstile hopper.

She dramatically slumps her head to the side. “ _Aww_ , I was _so_ about to take down that tiger luau-themed hula-hoop party.”

Before she can even flip open her cross-body purse for another coin, since that shouldn’t count as her full turn, he holds onto her elbow.

“This game’s whack. If you’re gonna horde all the tokens, at least let me pick what I’m watching. Play that one.”

He jerks his chin to one of those boxy simulator racing games that have rubber flaps on either side to keep the glare out. Those are usually pretty sweet, except this one is nauseatingly pink and playing upbeat meowing carnival music.

“Seriously? Hello Kitty Hot Rods? Dude, I know I’m younger than you and everything. But, I’m _sixteen_ , not _six_. Otherwise, you know, last night and this morning would have been a _little bit_ different.”

He tugs on her arm. “Come on, it’s like Need for Speed, but you can like smash your car into innocent driving cats. You love that kind of fucked-up shit.”

“True,” she says.

There’s something in his posture, eyes shifting everywhere, chest tight, like this jittery jumpiness that reminds her of when he’s in a jam and lies to Walt. She has no idea what he’d need to cover up now, so she strolls over to the opposite end of the arcade and crawls into this Japanese animated nightmare.

The inside is temporarily dark until she pops in four tokens (such a cash-suck) and then the screen has a surprisingly muted brightness that like doesn’t make her want to have a seizure. She randomly picks a raspberry-colored roadster and wonders how exactly he’s supposed to watch her play this thing if she can’t see _him_ , when he swings in next to her.

“Um, I’m not gonna be able to use the brake pedal with your shoes in the way,” she says.

It’s only about the size of one of those corny photo-booths for couples that like hold hands in the mall, so they’re jammed together.

“Yo, fuck the brake pedal, bitch.”

This makes no sense until he grabs her face and covers her mouth with his. He tastes like a combination of spearmint chewing gum and sugar and cigarettes, which she shouldn’t like, but she really does.

Both of his hands are on her back until he slides one under her bikini top. His skin feels like it drained the beach to bring it inside, beaming out warmth like he’s got sunlight in his pores. She can hear a cheery Asian voice countdown the start of the race when he grazes a finger over her zipper. He repeats the motion along her thighs. So, she spreads them farther apart, because if he’s going to tease her, she’s going to get all she can.

And, she’s positive this is just the PG-13 rated version of the funnel cake incident, until in a lust-filled blur, she’s moved to kneel on the bench seat, her shorts roughly pulled down, and her ass is currently naked in an arcade.

She shuts her legs. “What are you doing?”

Jesse drags his tongue across his lip. He’s so close she can feel it flick hers too. “Helping you out.”

“By pantsing me in public?”

“This ain’t public. No one’s here,” he says. “And, I’m not gonna be an asshole and let you walk around with whatever the chick equivalent of blue balls is.”

“That doesn’t exist. I don’t even think ladyboner means that. I was joking.”

“Yeah?” Jesse tilts his head enticingly. His palm creeps down her ribcage before he braces it hard on her stomach. His lips practically melt to the shell of her ear, gritty voice sandpapering her insides into dust. “You’re not like all twisted up in there, aching?”

She quivers. “Yeah, but I ate beach chili. It’s my bad.”

He’s massaging his way up her thigh, and her will is fading and flickering like the graphics to an old PlayStation game. And damn it, he nibbles on his bottom lip. She loosens her hold, exhaling loud enough for Manhattan to hear her consent.

He kisses the purple-ish indentions he left with his teeth on her shoulder and starts working his fingers into her at a slow pace. She bucks into him, glimpsing the screen where her car veers off the road into candy-colored vegetation, and blips back into the borders of the game to do it all over again.

Quietly moaning, she feels him pull away. In the next second, he grips her by her waist and shoves her onto the steering wheel. She kind of slams her head into the ceiling, but she’s too far gone to really give a shit. She’s not super sure why she’s sitting on this thing, thinks about asking him, but he’s touching her again.

He gets in a few more strokes before he pulls away. But, he doesn’t move her or anything like that. He lifts his hand up suspiciously close to his face and slips his first two fingers in his mouth.

She groans. And, she’s pretty sure it’s the idea of him tasting her that’s turning her on so much. Though, there’s a dark, warped place inside of her that likes the way his hand’s angled as if it were sticking out between her legs and she’s getting a glimpse of what it would be like to have something solid for him to suck on. She almost wants to clamp his arm into place and start thrusting, tell him to open his mouth wider, call him a good boy. But, even she has lines.

One of these is being stepped on as he plants kisses below her belly button. Because, yeah, what they were already doing was one thing, but getting oral inside of a Hello Kitty racing game is pushing it.

He’s in the crook where her thigh and area meet when she squirms and awkwardly pats his head. “You don’t have to do that. Like we’ve been outside for a while and I’m not showered and stuff. It’s got to be gross down there.”

He looks up at her, and those smoky eyes make her pulse, like stop. “Chill out. You’re fine. I wanna make you feel good.”

That’s all he says before he takes his first lick. She’d be insane to argue anything now. Hell, Dean only went down on her twice, and he’d made faces like he was eating insulation or something the whole time.

Jesse’s tongue is in all the right places, eagerly lapping, suckling, prodding like he actually wants to do this. He doesn’t even pull away when she roughly grinds into his mouth, grabbing his spiky hair until she’s falling apart with embarrassingly whiney little huffs.

Once she’s reasonably put together and dressed again, she climbs out of the machine with wobbly legs. It doesn’t stop her from speed-walking to the door. But, she’s still not fast enough to pass by ponytail unnoticed.

The guy looks only somewhat more awake with a just a hint of a smirk. “You guys have a good day.”

Jesse starts up a cigarette and waves with his lighter. “You too, man.”

Alex can’t remember the last time she blushed this hard.  

 


	12. Turn On/Off

“Yo, why the fuck do I gotta be little spoon?”

Alex has two arms and a leg wrapped around Jesse, lying behind him on her bed. She’d recited her new transport spell when he was giving her a piggyback ride under one of the Coney Island piers with the crackling of fireworks fading out, wind whipping sprinkles of water on them, a glimpse of a toenail-shaped moon trying to compete with all the blaring carnival lights. They blipped into her room in this position, and it was too fun to stop, especially since he’s trying to flop free like a freaking fish.

“Keep squirming,” she says. She yanks his shirt up and rakes her hands up and down his skin with her grip tight enough to feel each rib and the curve of his breastbone. “I love it.”

She kisses his back, his t-shirt shoved up as far as possible, and sluggishly drags her lips up his spine until she reaches the only tattoo on his body she hasn’t put her mouth on yet. Softly scraping her nails across his chest, she licks the awesomely creepy clown face inked between his shoulder blades.

He kind of grunts, and she notices he’s gone totally rubbery and relaxed in her arms. She doesn’t really understand why, hasn’t looked at it too hard, but there’s definitely something about having Jesse pinned against her a smidge unwillingly that makes her lightheaded and pleasantly queasy. It doesn’t work with him all calm and sighing, friendly hand coming back to rest on her hip.

Alex unbuckles his belt, taps a finger against the button, wiggles into his lower back. “Really, dude. Scuffle with me a little. I wanna play.”

She slides her foot between his thighs, makes a gentle, broad caress before she presses the ball of her foot into his crotch just hard enough for him to spastically jerk forward. Adding slightly more pressure, she rolls her heel into the spot, and she feels instantly better when he cries out a rasping-sounding “Alex” as he digs his shoulder into the mattress like he’s trying to get away.

“Mmm, that’s it. Struggle for me,” she says. She uses her other foot to wedge his legs farther apart, giving her heel more of him to rub.

Jesse lets out a partly muted gasp. “Freaky bitch.”

But, he’s tossing his weight around again.

It even takes Alex a few minutes to manipulate his fly open before she pulls his jeans lower. The movement of his pants brings her hips down with them. And, he’s really twisting, thrashing, getting so into the game she moans in his ear.

His voice is weirdly high. “What the fuck is poking me in the ass?”

She glances down to see the insides of her purse splattered across the comforter, which include what’s got him so freaked out. Maybe it’s not the best thing to do, but she laughs, like full-on, head back, sounding-like-a-safari-animal laugh.

This gets him still for a second, an almost visible chill running up his skin before he’s pulling away from her, like going-to-overpower-her struggling, so she has to force herself to stop.

Taking in a deep breath, she comfortingly claps him on the chest. “It’s just my wand, man. What did you think? I zapped myself a dick?”

“Shit wouldn’t surprise me at this point,” Jesse says.

Alex can’t help but smile at that. She keeps the wand where it is, grabs his waist, and rocks into him. “Sure you don’t like it?”

He lets out the cutest little yelp.

All she can see is a scrawny, Jesse-shaped tornado until she’s restrained underneath him, forearms held against the bed.

“Stop.” Each letter gets dragged out like it’s a different word. He’s pretty pissed. “And, don’t even think about saying one of your Mr. White jokes.”

If her hands were free, she’d splay them in surrender. She considers the doe-eyed, heavy eyelash-blinking move that’s gotten her out of who knows how many spells gone-wrong. But, he’s better than that.

“I’m sorry,” she says. It’s been a long time since she’s said those exact words, in that order, and it feels like someone’s cleaning out some unused section of her body, like if her lungs had a cluttered, musty attic inside of them. She coughs. “For serious, I’m sorry. I was a jerk.”

His expression's sort of mixed, eyes bulging out just a little. “Okay.”

“You don’t sound okay,” she says.

“I’m mad. Trying to like save it.” He grips her wrists slightly, grinds into her thigh. “You said you wanted to scuffle.”

Jesse nips at her jaw so intensely she whimpers. And, he hovers for a second until she pushes her hips into him in encouragement because it felt amazing. They’re naked soon. He’s just the right kind of rough: biting any part of her he can get between his teeth, hammering her into the mattress so hard she has to seal her room off with a sound-block spell, all raw, wiry, energy she wants to store up in her chest forever.

But, it’s Friday. The NYU library will be open by Tuesday. She doesn’t want to say it out loud or even see the words in her head, but she knows he can’t stay here indefinitely or anything. Even the idea of Tuesday makes her feel a bunch of different kinds of nauseous. So, she tries to shut it up by paying more attention to his breath on her skin.

He’s slowly kissing the tops of her shoulders, chest against her back when she realizes he’s talking. “Could we?”

She nestles her head into the pillow. “Do what?”

Jesse presses a kiss against that tingly place between her ear and scalp. “Yo, that was alright and shit, right? Like, that wasn’t too much?”

“No,” she says. “Totally a fantasy of mine.”

“Like in general or with me?”

Alex sighs. “Dumb question, Pinkman, ‘cause the answer is always you.”

He laughs, pulls her in more. “Yo, but really, can we go to Mars?”

“Not to sound too much like Justin,” she says. It feels pretty gross talking about her brother right after sex, Jesse still warm and naked, and she has to collect herself for a second. “But, doing that kind of ‘big’ magic isn’t the best way to stay on the DL with the wizard council. Too suspicious.”

“What about other places, you know, like stay on this planet?”

She readjusts so she’s looking at him. “Like where?”

“I don’t know. We could go anywhere. Like without plane tickets and travel time and shit we could be like snowboarding in Switzerland or eating our weight in lasagna in Italy or like hocking loogies off the Eiffel Tower. That shit’s endless.”

He looks so stoked she’d be a complete asshole to say no.

“Yeah, sounds cool.”

“Sweet, let’s go.” He sits up.

“Now?” She wines, because she was _so_ not done cuddling, and leaving her bed seems unnecessary when they could be having more fun naked time. “I’m too tired to go now.”

“Then let’s down some Red Bulls and like wrestle polar bears in Alaska,” he says. He seems to be looking for something and grabs his shirt.

She smack it out of his hand, pulls him on top of her, hugging him against her like he’s a pillow. “We can go tomorrow.”

“Come on, just one place. It doesn’t even need to be outside the U.S. You can pick it and everything.”

“Anywhere?” she says.

“Well, like anywhere not boring. I don’t want to dick around a museum or look at books or some shit.”

She laughs, kissing his chest because she brought him down at an awkward angle, and it’s the only thing in reach. “Because that’s exactly the kind of crap I would choose.”

She can feel him shrug. “Just trying to be specific.”

“Close your eyes,” she says.

Alex has to glance up to make sure he really has before she says the spell. Then they’re standing with her arms loosely around his back, warm water streaming down on them.

Jesse’s eyes are narrowed, but he’s slightly smiling. “Seriously? We’re in your fucking shower.”

She kisses the corner of his mouth before making her way down his throat, past his shoulder, gently tonguing a nipple.

He sighs, faintly laughing. “Yo, is this all you think about? We could be like at the pyramids or an African jungle, and you teleport us to your bathroom to fuck me again.”

She can feel a fluttering in his chest, his legs shaking a little as her lips crawl farther south, and she shifts to her knees. With both hands on his thighs, she slowly sucks at his hipbone. She blinks up at him through the water. “Not to sound like a psycho, but I’ve had a crush on you for like over a year. Just let me enjoy you. _Then_ we can look at mummies or go on a safari or whatever. Sound good?”

Alex might as well be chatting with herself because he’s harder than her wand, and she teasingly licks him.

“Shit, yeah,” he says.

She’s not sure if he’s actually answering her question or just like what’s she’s doing. But, it doesn’t really matter once she’s taken him in all the way, way back to that almost uncomfortable place in her throat. She starts bobbing her head up and down, hollowing her mouth out as she varies the suction between timid tastes and eager gulps, and he’s bucking into her because this isn’t their first time doing this, and he knows she can take it.

“Fuck me, you’re blowjobs are like art.”

She throws in a theatrical moan for the compliment. And, she might like listening to his blissed-out, gruff croaking _too_ much. It’s a beautiful thing, really.

After a ton more fun naked time, she pulls on some clothes in her room and flips through the new _Teen Vogue_ on her bed while Jesse uses the bathroom. Her phone rings.

“Still don’t care about robots,” she speaks into the receiver.

“It’s truly lovely to hear your voice,” Justin says. Whirring computer noises are going off in the background, and someone who sounds like Zeke is singing a Black Eyed Peas song really off-key. “Just so you know Zeke and I placed second in the junior category for voice activation software _and_ overall craftsmanship. Joanna, the girl I mentioned before, has five place ribbons so far. She’s pretty cool too. We both like peppermint tea, and the smell of old books, and isosceles triangles.”

She’s reading tips on summer nail trends, rolling her wrist in a don’t-waste-my-time motion. “Can’t you tell me this stuff when you get home? Or like never, and write it in your journal or whatever?”

“That’s not why I called. Wait a minute,” he says. Zeke’s screeching fades out and is replaced with intermediate mechanical clunking sounds of what she’s almost positive is a hotel icemaker. “Alright, so Joanna and I went to The Enchanted Hunters, this really neat bookshop in Vermont. The place was in this massive basement of some sort of industrial building. Joanna and I got separated somewhere between Christopher Columbus’ and Lincoln’s biographies. I may have become somewhat worried…and….”

“You freaked out like the time Dad left you at the remote control helicopter kiosk at the mall when he wandered over to Cinnabon?”

He’s silent for a hilariously long time. “It’s a possibility. Except I cried less.”

“Don’t think it would possible for you to cry _more_.” She dog-ears a picture of a royal blue mini-skirt she likes. “So, did this chick witness your ‘allergy’ to mold?”

Justin sighs. “No. Through a marginally funny, mostly humiliating series of slapstick trips and tumbles that I was going to tell you about, since you love watching me hurt myself, but you lost those privileges with the allergy crack, I ended up in a back room stocked with spell books. I found the book we’ve needed. There’s good _and_ bad news.”

As bummed as she is about not hearing what seems like an epically awesome story, she wants him to go forward, not backwards. “Just tell me what you read!”

“Calm down.” He sucks his teeth. “The text was translated. It turns out, it works as one of those ‘heart’s desires’ spells, and compliments whatever you happen to be saying aloud during its activation. So, I’m guessing you said something along the lines of ‘hopeless junkie.’”

She violently passes a page of horoscopes partnering each sign with its perfect shade of lip-gloss. “Don’t talk shit about Jesse, you asshat, unless you want to come home to a roomful of decapitated space dolls.”

He shrieks. “Alex, don’t joke about that! If you even open any of my Jim Bob Sherwood _action figures_ , the value drops faster than your flashy new Mustang five feet off the lot. I’m sorry. Now, promise me this won’t turn into a repeat of the Christmas of ’98 Elmo explosion.”

“We’ll see,” she says.

Justin clears his throat. “I guess I can find some assurance in that. Anyway, I need you to write down the reversal spell. Do you have a pen?”

Alex snatches a mechanical pencil from the floor and uses the back of her math notebook. The thing he tells her to write down looks literally impossible to pronounce. It’s a good thing he actually suggests using the Spy Spell.

He waits until he’s positive she spelled everything right. “So, there were several chapters on the spell. The universe he left is in no way being altered or affected. When he returns, it will be as if no time has passed. However….”

His pause lasts through three detailed tutorials on beach-worthy braids in her magazine, and Alex feels kind of nauseous from reading so much at once.

“Well, there’s no delicate way to say this. Jesse has been with you for a fairly lengthy period of time, and he knows his life is a television show, and I’m sure you’ve told him other details of his life. Or, hypothetically speaking, you perhaps did something monumentally irresponsible like let him watch the pilot. In light of the circumstances, it is absolutely vital that you wipe his memory before he leaves. Otherwise, the inner workings of _Breaking Bad_ will fall utterly apart, which would instigate even more problems concerning parallel universe crossing, realm rips, and things that are too complicated to explain over the phone _._ ”

She doesn’t want him to make fun of her or call her stupid, because maybe it _is_ a longshot. But, there’s a glimmer of hope she can picture like when she gets an idea for a painting. She has to ask. “What if he stays here?”

Justin isn’t cruel or condescending or even sarcastic. He does one of those patient kinds of sighs like when something’s happened that’s so bad, everyone in her family knows he’s the only one who can tell her. “The book said if Jesse stays too long outside of his world, ours will treat him like a virus. His body will start breaking down, decomposing until…his skin eats away at itself. Alex, I’m so sorry.”

It’s her turn to be quiet. She is long enough for Justin to ask if she’s still there. “Yeah,” she says. “Isn’t there some sort of spell we can use? Anything?”

“I looked, believe me, I looked. But, everything I’ve read says the same thing. You have to send him back, and you have to erase his memory. There’s no other way.”

Alex can’t hear his voice anymore, so she snaps it shut. She feels like she just anaconda-dry-swallowed her entire cell phone. Even though she’d loosely known something like this might be necessary, having Jesse and memory loss as a reality is heartbreaking, heart-stomping, and heart-stopping all at once. He won’t remember her at all.

The thought pricks at her ego like a needle in a voodoo doll. But, under that outer layer of burlap is the deeper ache that she’s handing him over to cold-blooded murder and Walter White.

She lies back on the bed, wondering how she can possibly rationalize letting Jesse go back to basically a clusterfuck of a life. With her eyes closed, she can picture him tearing up and trembling behind the gun. It’s the first time she’s come even close to crying since three weeks after Dean broke up with her, and she can’t even remember the time before that.

Alex is vaguely aware that Jesse’s back in the room. She feels a damp towel against her shin, and then a clammy palm on her knee. She internally orders her tear ducts to slow their roll before she can manage talking. “Have you decided where you want to go first?”

“Nowhere tonight. I’m tired as shit,” he says.

She peaks at him, relieved he doesn’t seem annoyed or bummed.

“Yo, you kind of beat it out of me.” He makes a hand-job gesture, smiling. “Like literally, I guess.”

It’s pathetic and sappy, but seeing him so at ease makes her feel a lot better. She doesn’t want to think about the last few minutes, so she doesn’t. Turning parts of herself off has always been one of her favorite and least favorite things about herself, maybe one of the things that makes people like her mom say she can be a little scary sometimes.

“So, we’re waiting until tomorrow?” Alex manages to yawn.

Jesse nods, standing, letting the towel slide off his slim hips. He’s a dewy, sinewy sight of a distraction. And damn, he’s ready to go in the best way possible. He lifts an eyebrow and smirks. “Why the hell are you dressed?”

She raises her arms, wiggles her fingers. “Help me out.”


	13. Temp

_This_ is the place he picks?

Alex is sitting on the roof of one of the many tiny houses built into the hills. This thing is so small her shoes are still in the grass, which is mostly all there is to look at. Well, aside from a tiny lake, the occasional tree or sheep, and a blue sign that reads “Hobbiton: Movie Set.” She doesn’t understand why this is such a big deal.

Jesse, on the other hand, is prancing around so excitedly he’s scaring off the wildlife. It’s actually pretty funny watching him run around this sunny field with a beanie, jeans, and a huge hoodie on. She’s wearing jeans too, paired with a thin, violet sweater because she wasn’t sure what kind of weather to expect in a place like New Zealand during their winter, which is New York’s summer. The air is a little chilly, but it feels pretty much like it does back home during her morning route to school in the spring.

Jesse sprints past and climbs the closest tree, grinning down at her. “Yo, they made _Lord of the Rings_ here!”

She softly knocks her heels against the wall. “Yeah, I think you told me like a million times already.”

That’s almost not an exaggeration because he’s dragged her around the entire country, stopping to gawk at empty caves and some hills and who knows how many forests where like so-and-so had to hide from some freaky crows or whatever. At each place, he’s reminded her that, _surprise_ , one of the three movies about weird guys who are way too short and hairy was filmed there.

Jesse hangs from a branch that’s about five feet up, swaying like a monkey. “If you tell me you’ve never seen any of the _Lord of the Rings_ movies, I might have to like reconsider our relationship.”

“Oh, I’ve seen all of them, several times, because Justin watches and re-watches the trilogy every November as some sort of nerd Thanksgiving ritual with Zeke. He also tried to read _The Hobbit_ to me when we were little until I magically sealed his mouth shut. I did the same thing to that Teddy Ruxpin my grandmother gave me for Christmas so I’d read more. But, like, who wants to hear some creepy-ass, dead-eyed bear read to you?” She shudders. “As far as the movies go, I just think they’re okay, I guess. I mean the way they represent elves is totally off, and they walk around a crap-ton, and it’s kind of mega-boring.”

Jesse hops to the ground, and points to one of the bigger, stupid fake houses. “So you’re saying if you saw fucking Frodo Baggins walk out of there, you wouldn’t be psyched as shit?”

“Probably not, dude,” she says. She cracks her neck. “Have we been here long enough or do you need a minute to like hump that fence over there?”

“Fuck you.” He flips her off, kicking a rock by his foot. “But, yeah, I guess we can go somewhere else, it being your turn and all.”

Jesse drifts close enough for Alex to grab a handful of his hoodie. Physical contact is like a necessity even for transport spells that don’t require wands. He’s eying her patiently. She’d told her parents she was staying at Harper’s for a while, so they don’t need to be back anytime soon.

She touches his shoulder. “You know what? I can do this junk like anytime. You can pick the next one. Heck, go to town and pick all of them if you want.”

He smiles.

And, the rest of the afternoon is a Jesse-approved whirlwind. They get pelted with weird melons by gnarly-looking monkeys in a humid safari local she wasn’t sure was on what continent other than it having painted people who looked like they walked right out of a National Geographic magazine. They mill around with some tourists in front of one of the Egyptian pyramids. They even for real spit on French people from the Eiffel Tower. The last one is a quick stop because apparently that kind of thing is frowned upon no matter what language you speak…or yell.

With a quick currency-change spell, they buy massive amounts of pasta in a cheap place near Venice, and wash it down with mint chocolate chip gelato in some sort of town square by a bunch of old though actually pretty awesome-looking buildings. There’s a ton of tan dudes yelling “che bella” at her, and Jesse’s doing such a crappy job at not seeming jealous that she blips them into a darkened antique shop with its windows open for a delectable, frenzied, humid quickie against a fancy marble table. Later in the afternoon, they watch an erupting volcano on one of the islands of Hawaii, but they take a pass on the surfing.

She’s never jumped from so many places in a row before, and she hopes it won’t make Jesse sick. If anything is going to do it, she’s betting it’s the temperature plunge from a luau paradise to a blizzard in the middle of nowhere. He’d said he didn’t want any of that city Alaska shit, but like Alaska, Alaska, like Discovery Planet Alaska. So, here they are with snow in all directions, mountains in the distance, polar bears a little closer, though still far enough to look more like cute Coca-Cola mascots and not man-hungry beasts.

He’s got his arms wrapped around himself, turning like a scary shade of blue.

“Stop all the racket, he’ll wear a jacket,” she says.

Her neon orange winter coat with the white faux fur-lined hood appears on him because it’s the biggest thing she owns, and it actually fits him. It makes him look like a Creamsicle, but it’s better than freezing to death.

She repeats the spell as her somewhat thinner pink and black checkered bomber jacket pops on her, and she zips the hood up to her chin, comfortable now.

“Yo, I feel kind of honored or some shit.” Jesse somehow manages to smile with his jaw chattering like he’s got a mouthful of plastic novelty teeth. “You gave me a jacket first. It’s like those moms on airplanes that put an oxygen mask on their baby before they snap one on their own face. Thanks.”

She shrugs, eying two cubs wrestling each other near the ice. His shoulder bumps into hers, and his face is still shivering when he bends down for a kiss.

He jerks back with his eyes so wide she thinks they might literally freeze like that. Then he dips down, fisting the front of her jacket, snaking his tongue in her mouth. She’s just getting a rhythm down when he pulls away, looking even more freaked out.

“Shit, you’re like ten times warmer than me,” he says. “Like the inside of your mouth feels like I’m making out with a cup of coffee. What the hell?”

She places both of her hands on the sides of his face, and his eyes flutter, lips hanging open, because it probably feels pretty great. “Wizards have naturally higher body temps. It’s why I was like so freaking hot at the beach. It’s a blessing and a curse. I’m never that annoying chick who complains about not having a sweater in the movie theatre, but I sweat like a fat dude playing basketball in gym class.”

She slides a palm down his Adam’s apple, feeling the vibration of his laugh against her fingertips.

“Think you want to pick someplace else before you’re a Han Solo-pop?” she says.

The reference isn’t lost on him, and he laughs again. “I’m too cold to think of anything. You go.”

Alex recites the spell, transporting them into an alley with a brick road. Their coats are gone. It’s dark out, city lights glowing, huge crowds walking past.

Jesse gives her a funny look. “Where the hell are we? It smells dank as shit.”

She grabs him by the wrist and pulls him out on the sidewalk. A building across the street is covered in drawings of mostly naked chicks and unpeeled bananas. Down a few blocks is what seems to be the start of a canal. She motions for him to bend down before she jumps on his back, slings her arms across his chest, because a piggyback ride sounds a lot more fun than dumb walking.  

She leans into his ear. “I’m about to make all your stoner dreams come true. We’re in Amsterdam, bitch.”

Jesse does a _Rocky_ -like fist-pump. “Yeah!”

Alex gently kicks the front of his thigh and they’re off to explore the red light district. This includes a stop at a coffee shop with a huge Bob Marley decal on the front glass where they share a cup of fancy hot chocolate and a blunt. They buy the pot there because it’s like bringing your instant coffee into Starbucks if they just lit up their own stuff. She goes to use the bathroom, and when she gets back, Jesse’s outside talking to a cluster of fratty-looking guys in North Face windbreakers. Or it at least looks that way. She’s more stoned than she’s ever been ever.

She watches a second, and they walk behind a corner. So, she sits back down and licks the rest of the whip cream from the mug. All those trippy Bob Marley posters are starting to get trippier. She considers buying food, but she’s too scared to accidentally order something with hash in it, and then like puke or die or something.

When Alex sees Jesse again, he’s almost strutting, hands deep in his pants pockets. He gestures with his chin for her to come out, and she feels weirdly airy and wobbly when she walks.

He nudges her with an elbow. “Yo, I just scammed a couple of American dumbasses into buying the rest of our stash for like four times the price. We’re rolling in the cheddar. Let’s party.”

“Cheddar,” she says, snickering. “Rolling in the cheddar makes us sound like…like we’re food people.”

She points at him. “People made from food, I mean. Not ones who just like food. Don’t get confused. _Ooh_ , we should make pigs in the blanket!”

Wiping off something tacky-feeling on her forehead, she starts laughing. It’s for no reason at all, and she’s vaguely regretting toking as much as she did when he went to the bathroom, _and_ ordered them their drink, _and_ stepped out for a cigarette.

Jesse seems to study her face, claps her on the arm. “ _Oh my god_ , you’re _so_ baked. I told you to like slow the hell down. The shit here’s like twice as strong. You feeling nauseous or anything?”

Right now all she wants to know is why he isn’t just as messed up as she feels. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he started smoking weed when she was still in like first grade or something. She’s had sex with a dude who doesn’t need to use a fake to buy alcohol and can like rent a car and vote for the president. He’s kind of old when she thinks about it.

“Huh,” she says. “I wonder what you looked like when you were my age.”

His image is sort of grainy, though she can tell his eyebrows are raised. The next leg of the night whips by like constant buzzing static on a TV screen, memories jumbled around like the scrambled Cinemax she used to try to watch in middle school: eating something flaky with a lot of cinnamon in it, drinking a licorice-kind-of-thing from his glass, and also maybe staring at two mice getting it on by a dumpster.

They have a conversation outside of a casino-like building with whirling lights chasing each other like little Pac-Mans that decided to screw the rules of the game and go ham on the ghosts, like attacking on all fronts and stuff. She thinks they might be doing a bit or whatever, because he keeps saying “are you sure” and she knows to respond with “yeah, yeah, yeah.” Then they do it all over again, and she giggles.

She has to show her completely-real-and-not-a-picture-of-the-weather-lady ID to a guy wearing sunglasses at night like that song her dad listens to. The next thing she knows, she gradually sobering up, watching chicks take their clothes off. She’s in a strip club.

Some sort of Euro-pop is playing, and it’s pretty dim everywhere except for the stage. There’s a table in front of her with an untouched thing of water. She realizes Jesse’s looking at her, smirking.

“Totally your idea,” he says. He hunches over closer to her, and nods to a brunette very naked with a whip in her hand. And, _wow_ , she’s actually using it on another girl who is obscenely bent over a railing. “This doing anything for you?”

Alex feels like she should say yes, you know, roll with it. She takes a sip of her water, and tries not to grimace too much. “Yeah…so good…it’s hot.”

He grins so hard she thinks his face might break apart into multi-colored Tetris blocks, which she basically pictures. It’s super weird.

“Wow, you suck at lying when you’re stoned.”

She glances back to the stage where the brunette is gagging the other chick. There are only a few clothed girls here other than herself, and she briefly wonders just how many of those electrical heart monitor things from CPR class Harper would need if Alex told her any of this stuff.

“You ever like ever thought about doing this…kind of stuff?”

Alex frowns with a mouthful of water. “You mean stripping?”

“Nah,” he says. He does a vague gesture with his arm that to her means literally nothing. “Like what they’re doing.”

Miss Brunette is currently like vacuum-swallowing the blonde’s entire ear into her mouth with her hands clamped around the blonde’s throat like she’s trying to squeeze candy out of the chick.

“I’ve never really been into girls, like not curious at _all_. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can like appreciate a nice rack. Who doesn’t? But, downstairs is all….” She makes a gagging sound. “Not for me. There’s just something about a dick that’s like way better in every way. It’s, you know, all out in the open, no mystery bullshit, like a friend that says “hi” the second they see you on the train even if they’re listening to their iPod. It’s just there to touch and it’s all warm and….”

“ _Shit_ , I think I got it,” he says. He’s laughing pretty hard. “You get the same look in your eye when you talk about dicks that you got when like you went on a fifteen minute rant about how much you love pigs in the blanket.”

She leans into him with the delicate pressure of her lips on his neck, trailing down a series of little kisses. “Sounds like someone wants a blowjob.”

Alex is already two-knuckles deep up his jacket when his breathe catches and he mumbles out a “thanks, we’re good, yo” to who Alex realizes is a bored-looking topless server in leather bottoms standing next to them. She walks away with a nod, and Alex slugs back more of her water because there’s gotta be something in the fog-machine-air here that’s drying her throat out.    

“You know, I wasn’t talking about girl-on-girl before. I meant, like, have you ever thought about getting into like hardcore shit with a guy…or like me,” he says.

The blonde now has a series of chains coiled around different parts of her body while the other chick pulls at the restraints.

“I’m gonna be honest and just say this junk’s too dark for me, like _way_ too dark. Why? Are you, do you want to….”

Jesse shakes his head with a reassuring smile. “Yo, like I said before, it was your idea to come in here.”

He takes his beanie off and crams in into his pocket. His hair is all static-y and messy, and it’s too much. She has to play with it.

He laughs. “You’re a pretty cool girlfriend for letting me in here, and like being in here too and shit.”  

She lets her arm drop. “Did you just call me your girlfriend?”

He brings his tongue to the back of his mouth like he’s got something stuck in his molars, nodding, staring off somewhere. “Yeah, I mean, I guess. I know I’m not gonna be here for like a long time, but uh….”

He ruffles the front of his hair with the sleeve of his jacket. “I don’t know why I said that. Sorry, didn’t mean to like freak you out.”

“Chill out, bro.” Alex tugs at the drawstring on his hood. “If you want to call me your girlfriend, please do it as often as possible. It’s like a bomb of happiness exploded inside my body.”

Jesse shoots her a grin, and they’re quiet for a while.

He lightly fingers her wrist of the hand she has resting on the table. “Yo, you don’t give yourself enough credit or whatever when it comes to magic shit. Like you did some pretty dope spells today, and you didn’t get any of them wrong.”

“Yeah, well, spells are basically wizard training wheels. Hand magic is really where like the work comes in or whatever. I maybe, kind of accidentally read something about it in one of Justin’s boring wizard periodicals, and it made me feel like I was even more behind in the wizard competition than I already thought, like insanely behind.”

“I know you probably don’t want to hear this shit from me, but like maybe you should study or practice more.” He appears to struggle over what he wants to say. “You know, like….”

“Apply myself?” she says.

He rolls his eyes. “Shit, I thought I’d die before I started giving advice from Mr. White.”

A sharp smack echoes over the music, and Alex sees the girls have switched places with one who used to have the gag ball and chains getting the brunette pretty good with a cat of nine tails.

“What do you want to do now?” Jesse fiddles with her fingers.

She knows it’s cheesy, but he kind of walked into it. “You.”

“Where?” He rests his chin on his hand with an amused expression.

“We have money now. Let’s have hotel sex.”

Jesse nods. “I can dig it. Let’s get out of here.”

They end up somewhere named something that has too few vowels for Alex to even think about pronouncing. It’s pricey, and their room looks like very awesome: bizarre graphics of tongues on the wall, all-white furniture, and a gigantic window framed in constantly changing fluorescent colors. In the middle of everything is a huge bed with a boxy, futuristic canopy like they’re inside a spaceship if it was from the movie _Barbarella._ She takes a painfully long time peeling off his clothes, tells him to lie flat on his back before riding him, languid and trance-like under a glimmering of neon pink lights, focusing on all the throaty, husky sounds he makes underneath her.

Several rounds later, they’re sharing a patio chair on the balcony still mostly naked aside from the boxers he’s got on and she’s wearing his dollar sign shirt. It’s about two in the morning, and the city’s still shouting and running, with bars and clubs and rooms spread out in front of them like a lit-up Battleship board.

Jesse sucks on his cigarette, chuckling. “Badger is gonna flip the fuck out when I tell him I went to Amsterdam. He’s wanted to move here since like seventh grade.”

It painfully reminds her of the crap Justin told her on the phone, because he’ll never tell Badger any of this stuff. He won’t know it himself. But, now doesn’t feel like the time to say any of this heavy news out loud.

Instead, she watches a cab pass, a fake half-smile on her face. “Totally,” she says.


	14. Cotton Mouth and Quaking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter has spoilers for Breaking Bad season 4, episode 1 "Box Cutter." Also, I know it doesn't make complete since that Jesse has smoked weed and drank in this story and is yet "clean" from meth, but I'm stretching the reality of drug addiction somewhat for my own story telling needs.

Alex takes another gulp from her massive water bottle. She’d woken up with cotton mouth so killer it would have probably been less terrible if she’d opened her eyes transformed into a full-blown legit snake. Animal spells were super easy to undo anyway.

She paces back and forth, draining the rest of the water, and takes in a breath of fresh air. She’s usually not a sucker for nature, but the view of looming mountain ridges from the Great Wall of China is a luscious shade of green she’d like to wear as a pair of cool leggings. There are only a few other tourists milling around a couple of yards down the wall, taking pictures and talking.

Jesse is excitedly kicking and punching the air like a total whacko. Though in his defense, their late breakfast was entirely made up of chocolate covered pastries and weird European energy drinks that may have had like uppers or horse blood in them.

“What are you doing?” she says.

He’s thrown in some “ay-yahs” and Mortal Kombat quotes like, “finish him” and the crowd is kind of starting to notice.

Jesse does a broad chop with his hand, grazes a brick pretty badly, and clutches his arm to his chest while he hisses. “Uh, trying to do Karate, obviously. If I’m gonna be in China, I got to pull out at least a few Tekken moves.”

She playfully pushes his shoulder. “Yo, you do know that both Karate _and_ Tekken are Japanese, right?”

“Like I care,” he says, smiling. He shakes his wrist out and braces an elbow on the wall. “I’m kind of bored.”

“Where do you wanna go?”

“I was thinking maybe the ABQ.” He plays with the zipper on his hoodie. “You know if like I don’t exist here or whatever, I was wondering what my house looks like or how the city’s different and shit.”

“Sounds cool to me,” she says. She sees the tourists are walking in the opposite direction so it’s okay to leave.

Before she can reach out to him, he wraps an arm around her waist, places his hand on her face, and gently kisses her. It’s sweet even though both of their mouths taste like overly-caffeinated cherry-flavored horse blood. Pulling back a little, he sets his chin on her head as she says the now more than familiar spell, and they re-materialize in his front yard.

Something feels off. There’s some sort of tick in the back of her head like she’s doing something stupid or irresponsible or forgetting something. It’s not one of her normal I-didn’t-study-at-all-for-this-exam feelings or one of those I- _may_ -have-started-a-massfire-in-a-village-of-trolls-while-trying-to-come-up-with-a-way-to-steal-their-magical-kettle-corn shrug-off mild panics. This is more like a hollowed-out, bitter kind of dread in her gut, like she needs to run immediately.

But, they’re in a pretty ordinary-looking suburban neighborhood in New Mexico. Some kids are riding tricycles a few blocks over and a lady is hunched over some bushes or plants or whatever people garden. It’s a sunny day, dryly hot in a way Alex isn’t used to, but likes alright. Everything seems perfectly fine. The parts of her brain she usually listens to are telling her weirdo emotions to shut the hell up. Plus, Jesse’s already wandered over to a window.

She follows after him. “Dude, there might be people in there.”

He’s peering into what looks like his living room in the show. No one’s there.

“It’s the exact same furniture and everything,” he says. He taps the glass. “There’s my couch, and my flat screen T.V., and my coffee table. Pretty fucking weird.”

“Yeah.” She rubs the corners of her eyes, because she’s seriously missing something very obvious here. Last night had been more about marathon sex and cigarette breaks than sleep. And, she seriously still feels like she has Amsterdam super-weed floating around in her skull.

“Let’s hit up some more places,” he says.

So, they stop by J.P. Wynne High School, which is actually called Rio Rancho High School, and it’s closed for the summer. He says only parts of the campus look familiar, and she thinks she remembers Justin saying something about them using different locations for different seasons. Saul’s office is something ironically called Hooligans, and Los Pollos Hermanos is a real restaurant, but the sign says “Twisters.”

Jesse’s last request is to see the lab. It takes extra concentration on her part, because transporting to locations she doesn’t consciously know where they are is always a little tricky. Regardless, she gets them there in a literal flash, off to a corner, behind one of the tanks.

Wait, _tanks_? Alex traces her finger over the cool metal surface of what looks like a meth cooking tank. Her head feels all kinds of spun out like she stood up too fast because whatever real place this is shouldn’t have actual tanks for cooking crystal.

She hears voices in the room. Glancing around this large silver thing, she sees the back of a camera. It all clicks into place.

She just popped them right in the middle of filming.

“Shit,” she says.

A million alarms are going off in her brain, Justin’s voice lecturing her about the risks of using magic irresponsibly, and she’s trying so hard to have a coherent thought that she’s doesn’t notice Jesse’s moving until he’s just a heel of a sneaker in sight.

Alex has to jog to catch up with him, and there are a lot of random people, fiddling with cameras and lights and boom mikes. It’s weirdly reassuring not to see anyone familiar, like they can get out of here before anyone notices. She jerks at his sleeve when basically one of the worst possible scenarios starts to play out in front of her like someone’s already yelled action to a very life-like nightmare.

Jesse looks about 5,000 different kinds of confused and startled. He lowers his voice. “Um, what the hell is Mr. White doing here? And why the hell is he smiling at me like that?”

“Call him Bryan,” she says.

It’s all she can get out before Bryan’s standing in front of them, drinking from a cup of coffee. He’s grinning, posture relaxed, looking so un-Walter White that even Alex is kind of taken aback. And she’s the one who’s watched every single episode of _Malcolm in the Middle_. She’s also seen him in _Little Miss Sunshine_ , and those episodes of _King of Queens_ and _Seinfeld_ , and even that time he was on _Walker, Texas Ranger._ Living with a Bryan Cranston-obsessed brother made it pretty impossible for her to _not_ accidentally binge-watch most of the guy’s backlog of work. Especially since she was nursing a Captain Morgan-infused hangover on the living room couch and successfully commandeered Justin’s bag of Double Stuff Oreos.

“We’re going to get this today,” Bryan says. He grips Jesse’s shoulder like he’s pumping him up. “It’s a hard scene. But, you were good yesterday, really good. I meant to say that before, but I don’t think I did. You ready?”

Jesse lets his mouth hang open for a second. “Uh, yeah, I’m ready. I’m totally ready. I’m ready.”

It takes every single piece of maturity Alex has not to exploit his nervousness to make another SpongeBob joke. _Man_ , it’s hard.

Bryan’s forehead creases a little. “Are you cold? I don’t remember you wearing that jacket for this scene yesterday?”

He nods dumbly. “I was just like chilly and shit, yeah, totally.”

Bryan seems to notice her for the first time, shoots his hand out. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Bryan. You must be part of the new catering team.”

Alex shakes his hand, idly imagining a tiny superimposed image of Justin perched on her shoulder, mid-conniption, shouting how jealous he is, and then telling her to leave like five minutes ago.

She smiles. “Yes, I am in the catering team. I’m Alex. It’s nice to meet you. I think I need to do something like over there.”

She practically scampers over to the snack table where a few people are talking amongst themselves, and she moves napkins around while scanning the place for an exit. It only takes her a minute or two to notice the break room section of the lab has a wall-thing that would make a great cover to disappear behind. Slightly more relaxed, she nibbles on some pretzel sticks.

Bryan’s in the middle of an apparently animated story with lots of talking with his hands, every once and a while touching Jesse’s arm or shoulder who seems to be attempting casual. He looks totally nauseous.

Bryan gestures to his cup, and they walk to the coffee machine together.

Alex discreetly steps closer to a platter of finger sandwiches.

“Nicolas is truly an excellent director. You have to work with him at some point.”

Jesse grabs a bottle of water with a shaky hand, sets it back down, and slides his fist in his pocket. “Cool.”

“Are you feeling alright?” Bryan rubs Jesse’s arm, almost reading his face. “You seem kind of cagey.”

He flinches, moves to scratch the back of his neck. “Yeah, man, I’m fine.”

“If you say so.” Bryan plucks a bag of prop meth from a large clear bowl, and pops it open to shake it into his hand.

“Yo, what the hell?” Jesse says.    

Even if this is all her fault, and she’s a terrible person, she really wants to laugh.

Bryan gives Jesse a sheepish look, chuckling. “I know, I know. I said I was cutting back on the sugar. It’s just been one of those days.”

He pops a cluster of what Alex knows is rock candy in his mouth. Jesse turns his face away, and Alex can see his eyes screwed shut like he’s super disgusted. Yeah, crystal meth probably tastes pretty gross.

After another handful, Bryan extends the baggie to him. “Want the rest?”

Jesse looks tempted, but for the wrong reasons. His chest just slightly quivers. “Nah, I’m clean now. I mean, I’m like, you know, watching what I eat or whatever.”

“He’s really in here today, huh?” Bryan’s touching Jesse again, this time his palm’s lying flat on the top of his head. He teasingly musses Jesse’s hair. “Save it for the scene. Don’t let him get you too down. Jesse’s subconscious, especially now, is a very dark place to be for too long. You got to shake it off.”

“What do you mean, especially now?” Jesse tries for the water bottle again, but once it’s in his grip, the liquid inside looks like a close-up of one of those puddles in _Jurassic Park_ , quaking with dinosaur footsteps in the distance. It’s like he can’t stop shaking. He takes a sip anyway, drops his arm to keep it by his side.

Bryan cocks an eyebrow. “Well, I’m not trying to insult you by misunderstanding your question, and giving notes or stating the obvious too much. The script does a much better job than I could. And as you’ve read, Jesse’s going through some serious shock after Walt ordered him to off Gale. Jesse’s never killed anyone before, and this is unprovoked homicide, standing so close to Gale, Jesse gets blood on his face. It’s truly tearing Jesse apart. Gus has no discernable reason to keep Walt and Jesse alive, and Jesse feels this. It’s like your line in the Denny’s scene we shot on Wednesday or Thursday or whenever it was. Jesse says that everyone is on the same page now, ‘the one that says if I can’t kill you, you’ll sure as shit wish you were dead.’”

Bryan comically shivers, bringing his teeth together. “Really gives you the creeps, really powerful stuff. I started reading _Thirty-Eight Snub_ , and it’s only downhill from here. Jesse’s on the verge of a complete mental breakdown.”

Laughing, Bryan pats the table. “Look at me, talking your ear off again. You really need to tell me to shut up when I get like this.”

Someone yells for Bryan, and he excuses himself to walk over to a guy with headphones around his neck.

Jesse glances in her direction, so pale it makes him look seasick. She grabs him by the elbow, and leads him back to the break room. The things she overheard are doing a queasy number to her insides too, but there’s no time to think about it yet. Just as she starts the spell, he jerks his arm away.

“I want to stay,” he says, swallowing. “Is there like a way we could watch, and not be seen? You know, just observe like Ebenezer Scrooge or some shit?”

Every instinct is telling her to split now, all those small, smart-ish voices she usually ignores have practically rallied with picket signs that all say “Get the hell out of there.” But, she can’t say no to this trembling, scared, defenseless side of Jesse. It’s like it’s got a hook in her chest, reeling her in, while at the same time casting a confused net of sympathy, protectiveness, and arousal all over her body. As if she wants to cradle him, tell him everything’s going to be okay, and then screw him to sleep. Maybe they both need a shrink.

She mutters out an invisibility spell, and he turns bright green. Keeping her expression as neutral as possible, she tries again and it looks like someone sawed him in half, leaving a jagged line down the center of his body. Clenching her fists, she says it one more time. He vanishes.

“Alex?” He sounds terrified. “Fuck, did you leave me?”

She blindly swats the air, and hits the front of his jacket. “Jesse, I’m right here. We’re invisible.”

Alex can feel him hold her wrist, lead her to where they were standing before except there seem to more people around.

“That’s Gus over there by Mr. White,” she says.

She spots Bryan talking to the guy who plays Gus who’s wearing a plastic orange jumpsuit for some reason. Victor, she doesn’t know his real name, and Johnathan Banks are discussing something by one of the tanks. Aaron is sitting in a swivel chair, reading over a thick stack of papers in his hands.

Jesse’s voice is a wobbly whisper. “What’s his name?”

“Aaron Paul,” she says. “Well, his real last name starts with an S. I can’t remember it, but he changed it because it was super hard to pronounce.”

Aaron gives Bryan a friendly nod, stuffing the papers in a desk drawer behind him. Bryan looks sort of confused, but a guy in light washed jeans and a dark long sleeve shirt is making an announcement about something. He’s not speaking very loudly.

They all seem to go to their positions, and they start filming. It goes on basically forever. Like everyone is in this scene, and some dude cuts in a couple of times to talk in Gus’ ear. His character is even more strikingly intimidating in person. She feels kind of guilty for the thrill she gets watching him work. He hasn’t said a word, and Walt’s babbling excuses for getting rid of Gale. With sure, determined steps, he takes a bright green box cutter from the table. Once he’s behind Victor, Gus pretends to slice Victor's throat open. She’s guessing some CGI stuff will be added later, but there is a good amount of fake blood already, and Gus purposefully holds Victor in a way that allows the stuff to messily splatter Walt and Jesse's clothes. Gus lets Victor’s body drop to the floor.

Vincent’s blood spreads to Walt’s feet as Gus methodically changes back into his clothes, walks up the stairs of the labs, and turns at the railing.

“Well?” Gus says, calm as ever. “Get back to work.”

They cut for whatever, she has no idea really, and Bryan and Aaron kind of gravitate to one another. Bryan’s saying something, seeming concerned, but Aaron laughs and kind of shoves him. Bryan laughs too, slaps him happily on the shoulder. It’s like they’re best friends.

Jesse’s so quiet, she almost doesn’t hear him. “Let’s go.”

Before they leave, she disgustingly realizes she finally got that sneak peek of fourth season she’d wanted from the very beginning before all of this. Now, with Jesse here, like this, she feels horrible.


	15. Is This the Blues I'm Singing?

It’s storming in New York.

Thunder shakes the walls of the apartment, making her room feel like the inside of a stereo. The lightning sounds pretty freaking close.

As soon as they blipped into the city, she’d made an appearance with her parents to let them know she was back from “Harper’s” before she locked her and Jesse in her bedroom. Twenty minutes or so go by, and he’s still face down on the bed. He hasn’t said anything.

Alex cautiously sits next to him, the comforter sinking in around her, and she runs a hand through her hair.

Jesse springs up. He starts slowly pacing by the window. He’s got both hands clamped to either side of his head like he’s going to squeeze it to death. “I can’t go back, I can’t go back, I can’t go back.”

She keeps her mouth shut even though she has a shit ton to say. Because everything that needs to come out of her mouth is just going to make him feel way worse.

He’s still walking back and forth, now closer to her desk where her chair is rattling each time he passes, like his steps are getting heavier.

“When you told me about Gale, I kept telling myself that like he must have deserved it, like it was something that had to happen. I thought, you know, somehow it would make things better with Fring, like he ordered me to or something. And, you said I did it for Mr. White, so like that seemed to make things sound alright. Now, I find out I’m gonna fucking lose it, and Fring is just murdering people for no reason, and he’ll probably kill me too.”

Jesse stops. He lurches over to her so fast he trips on the rug, stumbles, but catches himself enough so he can plop down chest-first on the bed. His neck and shoulders are craned up. “Alex, please let me stay.”

It’s too hard to look at him. She eyes her window covered in dark purple curtains. It can’t be later than five, but she can hear the rain hammering down, smothering the evening summer sun.

She feels his fingers wrap around her ankle.

“Come on, you can’t let me go back to that shit.”

Alex can’t believe she’s going with this tactic so early on. But, with all that’s happened and will happen, telling the truth is like the only way she knows to respond. She keeps her eyes on the curtains as they shudder above the A/C vent. “You can’t stay here.”

“Why?”  

She folds her arms in her lap, tries staring at her jeans like this will somehow help. “Two nights ago, I got a call from Justin. He went to some weird, giant book store in Vermont with this girl from the robot convention, and he found the book we need. You know, like the one we’ve been waiting for in the NYU library, and he told me you have to go back.”

He makes a sudden jerky move that bumps the headboard against the wall, voice cracking as the grip on her ankle tenses. “Alex, I’ll do anything.”

She shakes her head.

The bed moves again, rougher this time, and he’s standing. His face looks brighter, but in a desperate, pleading way that makes Alex wish she kept her gaze down.

“But, it can be like you said on the beach. Like I know you were kidding and shit, but like maybe you could turn me into an inanimate object like a doll. I wouldn’t be in the way or attract attention or anything. You could turn me back whenever you wanted. Maybe you could like get better at hand magic, and it would be no big deal for you. It could work.”

“If you stay here too long, you’ll die. Your body will fall apart, and you’ll die.” There’s a thin tear in the denim of her pants, right by her knee, and she pokes at it. “Justin told me something else on the phone. He said that before I send you back, I have to clear your memory of everything that’s happened since you got here last week. You’ll go back to the exact like second I zapped you out of, and like go on like none of this happened.”

A frightening, frantic growl bubbles out of his throat. “That’s our only option? There’s nothing you can do about it?”

His face is knotted in anger, tears welling up, and he’s yelling. “That’s it? There’s no spells or potions or anything? You’re just gonna fucking feed me to the fucking sharks like I was just some fuck to you?”

She bolts to her feet, shushing him. “My parents are gonna hear you.”

She attempts to step closer to him, but he violently pulls back. “Jesse, I can’t change anything. I want to more than anything, but there’s nothing I can do. You have to believe me.”

He’s turned away from her, and his voice is so tight it doesn’t even sound like him. “I need some fucking space.”

“Just stay in the room,” she says.

She doesn’t wait for him to say anything else because she almost positive he won’t. Softly closing the door behind her, she tries to think of something to do where she can think about anything else, work on some other issue.

This turns out to be actual work. The sub shop has a rare Sunday night dinner rush, maybe from the rain, and she throws on her server apron even with her parents eyeballing her like she’s streaking through the restaurant. She knows she has the summer off to be a teenager and get over Dean and study her magic, but she gives some half-ass excuse about them looking as if they need help. It’s too busy for them to question her much.

Alex ends up delivering sandwiches, busing tables, and taking orders until they close up at eight. She even stays the extra hour it takes to put all the food away and clean up. Her dad gets all proud and emotional, like the stir-fry incident, but Alex isn’t in the mood to find this annoying or funny. She just sits on the couch until they’ve gone to bed.

After half-way paying attention to an episode of _16 and Pregnant_ , she decides she might as well try to go back to her room. If he’s still upset, she can stay in Justin’s since he’s still not back from the convention.

She almost knocks on the door, but she doesn’t want to make too much noise in the hallway.

Jesse’s already under the covers, bare shoulders, back of his head to her. She changes into some pajamas, and turns the light off. It takes her a while to remember where the cot is before she starts to undo the zipper on the sleeping bag.

“Don’t,” he says. He sounds groggy and a little choked up.

She moves over to the bed. “Do you want me to leave?”

Hands are on her so fast it gives her that unsettling falling feeling. He pulls her down snug against his body, drapes the covers over her, and sighs.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have said that shit.”

Alex sniffles, hopes he doesn’t notice. “I really asked Justin if there was anything else we can do, and he said no. And Justin can fix everything, so if _he_ says no, there’s seriously….”

“I believe you.” He runs his hand down her back. “There’s nothing we can do, and I don’t want to waste the time I have left pissed off. I don’t want to be mad at you.”

Jesse’s mouth finds hers. The kiss is brief, but it’s enough to ease her eyes closed.

They sleep in late, eat ice cream for breakfast, and visit the Statue of Liberty because it’s the one thing he wanted to do in New York that they hadn’t done yet. It’s not raining anymore, and the sky’s nice and clear. But, the future clogs the air around them like smog, and it makes everything a shade or two drearier.

Even when they’re joking around or teleporting to Japan for awesome sushi, she can tell a difference in the way he looks at her, talks to her, touches her. Just like the spell, there’s no way to fix it. So, she just tries to shut the worry out, and like not take for granted what she still has. It’s all she can do.  

\---

They decide it makes the most sense for him to still leave on Tuesday. It was the plan ever since he was alright with staying. So, there’s no reason to change it now.

He puts on the clothes he was wearing when he got there, hands Alex what’s left of his pack of cigarettes because he wasn’t smoking Parliaments then and they don’t want to take any chances. They’re back in the lair, early in the morning so there’s no chance of her parents walking in. Alex hasn’t been in this room since that Monday morning when Justin woke them up on the couch. She doesn’t talk about it.

Alex has always hated saying goodbye, so they don’t really talk all that much period.

Clutching her math notebook in her fist, she offers a crappy attempt at a smile. “This sucks.”

He nods with his mouth in a tight, firm line.

“I wish I could say I hope everything turns out okay. But….” She’s not sure how to finish that thought out loud, letting it hang there like a dead body. Her eyes sting and she has to shut them for like a second.

Jesse holds just the tips of her fingers from the hand she has limp by her side. “Even though I won’t remember anything, it was still like nice and shit that I got to leave there for a while. It was great really. I don’t think you should regret it or whatever, ‘cause I don’t. This has meant a lot to me, and I want you to fucking know that, alright?”

“Yeah,” she says. Her stupid vision is blurring, and she has to wipe her face across her upper arm. She squeezes his hand, knows her voice is going to creak like rusted metal if she says this, but says it anyway. “I’m gonna miss you, man.”

His smile is almost too real. He kisses her.

Once his lips aren’t on her anymore, she controls herself enough to go through the necessary motions. She tells him to sit down, gets the Spy Spell in the right position, and the parting he gives with his eyes is enough to make words even dumber than they usually are. They don’t need them.

Pressing the right button, doing everything Justin told her to, she watches the blue light of magic swallow him up.

She’s sobbing into an empty armchair.

\---

Crying is basically all she does for the next two weeks. She has to hide it from her parents, but Justin and Harper practically take turns sitting with her in her room where they usually find her wearing something or another she bought for Jesse, too far gone to care they’re seeing her so idiotically emotional.

Alex can’t manage to talk to Harper until a few days later. Once she starts, it all comes out at four or so in the morning, over a shared tub of chocolate syrup-covered popcorn, with her knees tucked into the fabric of his skull shirt.

Harper looks confused in a kind of concerned, parental way, sitting cross-legged on Alex’s bed, wearing footy pajamas dotted with smiling suns. She clears her throat. “Alex, I don’t want to sound insensitive, but isn’t Jesse just a fictional character? He’s from a television show, right? I mean, in a way, he never existed.”

Alex knows Harper’s only trying to reason this out, but it spins her into another blubbering, hysterical mini-melt down.

Harper lets her cry for who knows how long, comforting arm around her shoulder while she passes Alex a seemingly never-ending supply of tissues like that corny magician scarf trick.

It isn’t until Alex has a clump of Kleenex pressed to the hot skin of her eyelids that she can answer Harper’s question. Taking in a shaky, shallow breath, her fingers spasm around the paper in her hand. “I know it sounds weird or whatever, but I don’t think of Jesse like that. He like, I don’t know, he’s like the only guy I’ve ever felt this way about. He’s this totally wonderful person with the shittiest life. And, I feel like complete shit because I couldn’t do anything to stop him from….”

Harper seems painfully understanding after that, even though Alex has to stop to ball her eyes out against Harper’s fluffy shoulder, and it almost makes Alex feel worse for some reason.

It’s crazy, but the thing that helps more than Harper or Justin or even pints on pints of Chunky Monkey is focusing on magic. She starts coming to lessons on time, taking occasional notes, and sometimes asking topic-related questions. Her dad and Max think she’s scheming something pretty hardcore and possibly life-threatening for everyone in New York, but it doesn’t bother her really.

When she’s not learning a new spell or hand magic technique, she busies herself with serving shifts at the sub shop, and shopping, and going to the movies with Harper. She still thinks about Jesse. And, it’s like she almost finds herself involuntarily doing things like sitting on the open sill of her window in his military jacket with a lit cigarette between her fingers. She’ll take a few drags, letting the smoke flow out of her mouth without inhaling. She thinks it’s the smell she’s really doing it for, maybe the taste too.

At least one night every week, she’ll dream about Jesse. They start off pretty normal or whatever, like memories of watching the tigers at the zoo together or laughing and dancing, still pretty drunk, to “Hypnotize” in that neon hotel elevator in Amsterdam or the way he’d grit out “fuck” into her ear with her hand snaking past loose denim, gripping him almost too hard. There’s lots of sex dreams too, ones she wakes up from with a stomachache, sweating a little. At some point she dreams of a flash of blue eyes, and then the back of his head is shaved close to his scalp and her lips are pressed to warm fuzz, and he smells like beer. There’s one of him standing over a tray of crystal, hammering the glass to pieces with his expression terrifyingly blank and music ringing out from white earbuds.

Her dreams of him are just shards of images for a while until mid-August or so when she’d crashed at like five o’ clock after her mom dragged her to a totally gruesome three hour hell of back-to-school shopping at Target. Jesse’s hair is normal again. He’s wearing a black jacket, sitting on his futon, hunched over the X-Box plopped in his lap. The thing’s got like a panel open and he’s poking at it with a screw driver. Skinny Pete is sprawled out next to him with a controller in his hand, looking kind of bored straight ahead.

Alex realizes Badger’s standing a few feet in front of them. He’s channel surfing and eating a chocolate doughnut with sprinkles. He chomps down like half of it. “Come on man, what is up with you? You have the funds, why don’t you just spring for HBO already?”

Jesse jabs into a spring. “Yo, that channel’s bullshit ‘cause _Sopranos_ is over.”

“It’s called watching re-runs,” Badger says. “Plus, they got like that Curb Your Appetite show on there, and this new one where the dude from _The Punisher_ has like a huge dick and bangs a ton of naked chicks. He’s a gigolo, which is awesome, ‘cause, I mean, like who doesn’t want to watch Frank Castle nail bitches for money?”

Skinny Pete nods, messing with the beanie on his head. “Man, I’d so be down for that.”

“You guys, shut the fuck up,” Jesse says. He seems to be tightening random screws. “If you want to start like a fucking circle jerk, go do it somewhere else, fucking homos.”

Skinny’s frowning. “Whoa, no need to get all rude and stuff, man. Like take it down a notch.”

“Yeah, dude, like don’t take your anger about your own issues out on us, like reflecting or detecting or whatever they say in group.” Badger like inhales a pink sprinkle from his knuckle, passes by CNN and an infomercial about the value of gold.

Jesse rolls his eyes. “I swear to God, man, if you give me anymore of that twelve step bullshit, I’m gonna straight-up shove the remote up your ass. And, you know, just so we’re all on the same page here, _you_ were the one who spilled your Monster on my X-Box. So, like I ain’t deflecting, _asshole_.”

Badger grins, snapping his fingers, frosting all over his face. “ _Deflecting_! _Gah_ , that was really gonna bug me. _Shit_ , I don’t think I’ve like learned so many new words since the first time I tried shrooms in the parking lot sophomore year and accidentally sat through a whole like SAT prep course in the library. That Kaplan lady was like totally into me though.”

Jesse snaps his head up with the screwdriver threateningly pointed at Badger when she sees the inside of her room on the screen. She’s sitting on her bed with Harper while the helping hand invention Justin came up with brushes her pink furry wallpaper. Then _Family Guy_ is on.

 _“_ Yo,” Jesse says. “Turn it back.”

Badger changes it, and Alex is excitedly talking to Harper about the new Sorority Party Disaster movie. She has to finish all her chores before they’re allowed to go out. There’s a part of Alex that knows she’s dreaming, and she doesn’t need to see anymore to know she’s going to wear out the helping hand with mopping and cleaning dishes and junk. She’s also going to miss that movie and be totally bummed out. She knows this because it’s already happened. Why it’s being played in her dream like a show doesn’t make sense at all.

Jesse seems pretty caught up in watching her walk around the room with a smirk on her face. He’s squinting.

“Wow, bro, are we for real watching Disney Channel right now?” Badger laughs. “’Cause I don’t think you can give us shit for talking about _Star Trek_ if you tell me you’re like into _Hannah Montana_ or whatever.”

Jesse kind of rolls his wrist, waving the screwdriver dismissively. “Yo, this ain’t _Hannah Montana._ It’s _Wizards of Waverly Place._ ”

The tool in his hand clanks to the hardwood floors, and like every part of him looks crazy edgy.

Badger isn’t facing him, so he doesn’t notice. He steps closer to the T.V. and puts his elbow on the top of the set. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. This chick’s like _way_ hotter than the other one with the bad wig. _Damn_ , not get all _To Catch a Predator_ or nothing, but like I’d totally bend her over that desk and like….”

“You’re blocking the T.V., yo. Move your ass,” Jesse says. He still seems mondo tense, eyes narrowed with his tongue at the corner of his lips like he’s thinking something over.

Skinny’s shaking his head next to Jesse. “You guys are _sick_. She’s got to be like fourteen years old.”

“She’s sixteen,” Jesse says. The sound of his own voice appears to surprise him or embarrass him or something, and he fumbles around for the screwdriver, coughing.

“Hey, hey, hey, looks like somebody’s got a thing for _jailbait!_ ” Badger sings that last word.

“Whatever, yo.” Jesse’s fiddling with the X-Box again. “You’re the one talking about like doing this chick from behind.”

Badger pinches up a jelly-filled from the Dunkin’ box on Jesse’s coffee table. He shrugs. “Yeah, but like you guys expect that kind of shit from me, like I’m single and I’ll fuck anything. I’m Badger, yo.”

He somehow manages to cram in the entire doughnut, grape jelly spilling over his mouth, wiggling his eyebrows. He’s got enough swallowed to sort of talk. “What if I told Andrea you’re getting all horned-up over some sixteen year old, like some mini-me version of her except more bangable?”

Jesse lets the X-Box thud to the couch, standing. “What the hell, man, don’t talk about my girlfriend like that.”

“I didn’t say jack shit about Andrea, dude.” Badger wipes his face with back of his hand. “I was…I was… _.Dude_! Did you just call this other chick your girlfriend? Holy shit, bro, that’s kind of like…adorable.”

Skinny and Badger are cracking up at this point, and Jesse looks hella confused. He mumbles out something that may be “fuck you guys” before he storms down the hall to the bathroom.

Slamming the door behind him, he leans over the sink. He closes his eyes, and it’s like Alex can see what’s going on in his head. It’s just a single image. She’s naked, perched in his lap, fucking him into the chair by her window. The fantasy of her leans forward to suck at the tattoo on his chest just as he holds onto the bathroom counter, making a needy little huff, jerking his zipper down.  

Then she’s awake. It’s startling on a few different levels because it’s around one in the morning and dark and that dream is just a complete mess. She tries to piece any sort of understanding together until she eventually conks out again. The next day, over a bowl of Corn Pops, she decides it didn’t mean anything. She tries to forget it.  

A few weeks later, classes start again. Harper and Justin stay after a lot for their extracurricular crap, which means she has to walk by herself. She ends up taking some weird ways home, stopping by sleazy areas where, from a safe distance, she watches guys loitering around in basketball sneakers and baggy clothes, probably with drugs in their pockets. Sometimes she’ll pick out the skinniest one and imagine Jesse’s face underneath the hood. It makes her happy, but only for a little bit.

Somewhere around her eighth or ninth visit to Crackville U.S.A, she decides if this whole high school thing doesn’t work out, she could always drop out and split her time between the food industry and being a serial killer. Because this kind of crap is getting to an obsessive level that’s even worrying her, and it’s not really doing anything for her in the long run.

That dream starts to bother her again. And, somewhere in the memory of getting a peak of Jesse lending himself a hand and the creation of the helping hand, she gets an idea. So, she trades one fixation for another. She starts researching a way to get him back.

 


	16. Won't You Come On Down To My...

Sometime in late November, she throws all of Jesse’s stuff away except his military jacket. Alex takes like five whole minutes to carefully fold it before storing it deep under the piles of clothes spilling out of her closet like the thing’s vomiting t-shirts. She’s been working her ass off trying to figure out how to bring Jesse back, but she doesn’t want to get her hopes up if her research doesn’t go anywhere. Though she does get a gift card for the World Wide Wiz Web as a Christmas present from her dad, and she spends it all on books about how to create your own spell. She’s never in her life purchased a book before, so it feels totally bizarre reading for non-school related reasons, especially since she was in such a tight relationship with Spark Notes.

On weekends she sometimes tells Justin she’s going to a party, and camps out somewhere lame and quiet like a coffee shop or a 24-hour college library to do more research. On her way home, she’ll pick out a couple of red-faced, stumbling dudes munching on carbs or waiting for a cab and flirt with them enough to get a drunken hug, just enough to get some of the club smell rubbed into her clothes. Justin has a nose more sensitive than a Celtic troll, and she needs to keep up appearances. And, when all else fails, she has a backup spray bottle of raspberry Burnett’s she can spritz herself with before strolling back in the apartment.

In mid-January, her magic has gotten so much better she earns a personal visit from Professor Crumbs. He floats in from the portal door in some dramatic display of mist with his robe and long old-man hair and beard flowing in the wind like this is the beginning of one of Justin’s stupid Tears of Blood music videos. She wouldn’t admit it, but she’s kind of annoyed he interrupted their wizard lesson until he makes everyone else, _including_ Justin, clear out of the room. Then Professor Crumbs talks her ear off for like an hour, and she’s positive Justin’s got a bat ear to the lair door, listening in. It’s all positive stuff that he has to say, but the dude’s ancient and smells like fourteenth century herbs and dragon breath. And really, how many times can she hear “tremendous” in a British accent, and not laugh?

Mason, a new British student, transfers into her art class in April. He’s sweet and persistent and also does some super strange dog paintings. That last thing is kind of explained once she finds out he’s a werewolf, and he knows she’s a wizard. They stay just friends until somewhere in the first or second week of summer. She kisses him at Molly’s house party, leaning against the kitchen island, her fifth shot of Malibu still a little in her mouth.

He doesn’t drink alcohol, doesn’t swear, is very English and polite and shy. He’s like the farthest thing from Jesse. She wonders if that’s kind of the point.

A few days after Molly’s party, she’s sitting in a wicker chair in his living room. He’d had this whole big day planned with a picnic and flowers and sparkling-freaking-non-alcoholic-who-buys-this-shit-grape-juice. But, it started hailing around the time he started slicing into a block of chalky-looking cheese, and his apartment was the closest to the park.

His parents had greeted them at the door with giant fluffy towels, making her keep the thing wrapped around herself to not get any of the furniture wet, like she’s a damn dog or something. Then they’d slipped off to the kitchen to make something called blood pudding, which she hoped was the English version of dirt pudding, like not as gross as it sounded and hopefully came with candy inside.

Mason’s sitting in an identical wooden chair several feet away, though he got to change into dry clothes and ditch the towel. She’d actually used that as an excuse to try to sneak in some fooling around time before dessert was done. His parents seemed pretty busy listening to some vaguely 80s, heavy synthesized, British music, _and_ he _was_ going into his bedroom anyway. So, it seemed normal for her to do like a sensual lean on the couch, asking him to show her his room. He’d just waved her back, scolding her for dripping on the settee. She wasn’t even positive if that was a real thing.

“Alex,” he says.

 _Gosh_ , he makes her name sound like it has about a million vowels shoved into it, and the first “A” sound is _so_ off, and she can’t really tell _why_ she’s so frustrated.

He does one of his elfish, cheery smiles, like he’s a red-nosed Claymation kid in a Holiday Kleenex commercial. “Are you feeling alright?”

Alex picks at a cuticle that’s already starting to bleed, and she realizes she’s not mad he isn’t like ninety-five percent of the dudes she knows who would be tugging her bra off with his zipper down up in his room right about now. No, it’s the weird way he’s holding the remote, like outstretched with his arm super stiff. It reminds Alex of her newest dream about Jesse.

He was in that big circular chair with the blue and white pattern surrounded by opened sleeves of M & M cookies, a bag of Jalapeño and Cheddar Doritos, a half-eaten plate of bagel bites, an almost empty 40, and a bong. In his oversized red shirt and Ren and Stimpy boxers, he looked like a pothead ready to legit hibernate for the winter.

All of the lights in his living room were off aside from the one coming from the T.V., and he was holding the remote out at the same angle. He seemed to be flipping channels mindlessly until he stopped. Alex could hear her voice from the screen, but the volume wasn’t super high. Then she could actually see the T.V. and she was standing by Cab 804. Those whole two days of bringing it back to life, having it fall in love with her, and then trying to change it back into a regular taxi were playing out right on his forty-inch Vizio. Except there was also a laugh track and like these breaks of swirling lights and music and promos for some show about twins living in a hotel. At one point, she seemed to be looking directly into the camera, eating fried okra with her hands, saying something snarky with her bedroom eyes on.      

Jesse used his teeth to scrape the cheese off a bagel bite, wiped grease off his shirt, and kind of gave the room a guilty onceover. Widening his thighs more, he slid his hand over the front of his boxers.

She’d jerked up awake, this time with her head at the foot of her mattress, more confused than ever.

Chewing at the tender cuticle of her pinky, she looks over at Mason again. “What would you do if you found out like your whole life was like a T.V. show and anyone could watch it?”

“You mean like _The Truman Show_?” Mason smiled.

“Never heard of that one,” she says. It might be shallow or whatever, but she misses understanding any and every reference that came out of Jesse’s mouth.

Mason lifts an eyebrow. “Really? It’s a great American film with Jim Carrey, and he grows up in this world where everyone but him knows his life is being broadcasted on the telly. When he finds out, he goes mad and, well…I don’t want to give it up if you haven’t seen it yet. Why do you ask?”

She shrugs. There’s no way she can say “oh, you know, just wondering how you would react if you found out your cross-dimensional boyfriend lives in a universe where your life might be some sort of kid’s sitcom version of _Harry Potter_ and said boyfriend likes to jack off while watching you and maybe you fucked over _another_ spell.” Yeah, definitely not.

“You ask such peculiar questions.” He laughs.

It doesn’t sound anything like Jesse and they end up playing some weird board game with his parents and blood pudding _so_ does not have gummy worms in it.

Alex tells Harper all about her day, keeps her updated about her sort of love life with Mason. Harper’s positive this kid’s doomed to crumble in Alex’s hand like a scone or crumpet or _whatever_ British people eat with tea. He’s apparently too nice for her, and like she’s not dating him for the right reasons. Alex is more than aware that she’s always been so good at using people. It’s scary easy falling back to that.

Alex manages to make some headway with her spell. She’s working at what she thinks is a good pace until she sees a _Breaking Bad_ promo while walking through the living room. She only catches like a second of it before Max changes the channel to _SpongeBob._ But, in that second Jesse’s screaming and crying. It sets this creepy feeling down the back of her neck, sharp like someone’s peeling her skin off. She spends the rest of the night getting sick in the bathroom.

She starts to disappear for hours at a time, not even giving excuses for wanting to be alone, shrugging her family off when they ask if she’s been sleeping enough. Staying up until six in the morning before getting back up at eight or nine becomes her new routine as she struggles to work out things like the logistics of memory wipes and multi-dimensional transporting and becoming pretty close with a dictionary because only about half those words make sense to her. She breaks it off with Mason once she realizes she’d been spending more time ducking his calls than actually seeing him. He takes it pretty well, like only crying a _tiny_ bit, and she leaps back into her work.

One of the few things she takes time for is to watch the season four premier. It’s mostly scenes she’s already witnessed first-hand or at least knew about from what she heard on set. Still, she feels better when Justin holds her hand.

The second episode is violently worse. She spends half of it hysterically crying under her Navajo blanket, while Justin tries to calm her down. Jesse is so aimless and depressed and ruined. It’s agonizing to watch. She decides she won’t let herself sleep at all until this thing is done.

When Justin goes to his room, she hauls her materials and a six pack of Red Bull into the lair. She’s not even sure how many hours pass, but sometime between her fourth and fifth energy drink, she thinks she did it. She goes over every angle, detail, and scenario over and over again. Letting out a girlish squeal, she grasps the paper with her final product.

“You finished?”

Somehow Justin’s standing behind her, which means she didn’t hear him open the door, walk across the room or anything. She didn’t even know it was possible for her to concentrate that hard. Considering he has her research in his hands and the books are open to super incriminating chapters, she knows she can’t brush his question off. Then she really thinks about what he asked.

“How did you know I was even working on something?”

He rolls his eyes, turning the page of the textbook closest to him. “Alex, did you really think you could go from an F to a B plus in your wizard training, sneak off to libraries, and hide books under your bed and not make me suspicious? I’ve known you were up to something ever since I saw your World Wide Wiz Web browser history after Christmas. I just wasn’t sure what it was exactly.”

She’s too sleep-deprived to even bother feeling stupid for that last screw-up. “Are you gonna try to stop me?”

“Tell me what you’re doing first,” he says.

Alex can’t believe she just indirectly asked him for permission, and she thinks about bolting from the room. But, getting a second opinion could only help. She slaps her hands on the desk. “Okay, let me get through this before you say anything.”

He perches on his normal stool, giving her a nod that she knows he’s ready to listen.

“So, I read like a million books. And when I say a million, I mean like twenty. Which might as well be a million for me, because the last thing I read before this other than comic books was _The Giving Tree_ , and I think I basically made _you_ read it to me. Anyway, once I found out that you were right and there were no spells or potions or whatever to get Jesse back, I made my own spell. I forgot we could even do that, you know, like the helping hand thing you made. I studied up on the process and legal rights on all that crap, and I got kind of stuck until I started reading about cross dimensional regeneration. I looked more into memory spells, and then spent a crap-ton of time putting everything together.”

She notices her feet are taking her in circles around the front desk of the lair, and she keeps walking. “If I did this right, which I like to think that I did, I will be able to send myself into Jesse’s world. There, I can recite my spell, which will split Jesse into two people. Both of them will be identical in every way, except the ‘original’ Jesse will have his memories of me. The ‘second’ Jesse won’t appear until we’re gone, and the ‘original’ will be all set or whatever with living here forever, you know, like not falling apart or anything. Because you know, magic is really about balance. If I give his universe a copy of him, ours won’t reject him. And yeah, I do feel all kinds of shitty about having a different Jesse live through all the crap that’s probably going to happen to him, but I can’t save _all_ the Jesse’s and like start up an adoption center or a harem or something.”

Just as she’s about to make another lap by him, he holds his arm out.

“Let me get this straight. You created your very own spell from scratch?”

“Well, I mean it took me almost a year, and like half of what makes it effective and junk is the hand magic I worked in there.”

She’s feeling sort of self-conscious until he’s grinning.

“Alex, that’s amazing!”

She glances at the spell she’s been holding this whole time and hands it over.

“There’s one thing wrong with it. No matter what I’ve tried to change, the only way for this to work is if I go into the _Breaking Bad_ dimension in the present. I can’t go back before that at all. It’s why I wanted to get it done tonight, because I have to go now. If I wait longer it’s only gonna be worse for Jesse, you know?”

Alex fiddles with her pencil on the desk. “So, I want you to look it over.”

“Of course,” he says.

He’s acting so great and understanding that it makes her feel slightly guiltier for spending the next half hour leaning over his shoulder, asking him if he’s done already.

“Alright,” he says. He sets down the last of her notes, seems to go into some deep trance for way too long then pats her on the arm. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this is one of the most sound, well-researched, safest homemade spells I’ve ever seen. I really think this will work. And in regards to your time dilemma, I say use it as soon as you feel ready.”

“Seriously? You’re not gonna tell mom and dad?”

“No,” he says. His eyes get a little shifty, and he’s clearing his throat, stalling or something. “Actually, not to make this all about me, but…do you think you would mind helping me figure out a way…to turn Juliet back?”

 _Wow_ , Alex had her Jesse blinders flipped on so totally intense, she pretty much forgot her werewolf ex-boyfriend bit Justin’s vampire girlfriend and made her revert into a one hundred year old lady. She can’t even imagine what her grades in school would be like if she gave a single shit.

“Dude, absolutely,” she says. She’s walked over to the mirror, fixing her hair because it’s a freaking mess. “You know, after all of this.”

He wishes her luck, lets her know he’ll help if she needs it, and leaves when she tells him to scram. Taking a billion or so measured breaths, she says the words she’s been practicing for weeks, flexing her fingers exactly right. When she feels the tingly, numbing sensation start from her gut and travel out, she shuts her eyes. It’s dizziness and chills and everything randomly smells like pork and pineapple.

Alex feels hard floors under her shoes again. She’s inside Jesse’s living room.  

Or what’s left of it after that two-day party because everything is covered in bottles, shreds of pizza, and random bits of trash. The Roomba is stumbling around the debris like a drunk R2-D2. She can tell from the window that it’s late, probably hours after she last saw Jesse in this position on the floor. He’s crouched in front of his speakers with the volume loud enough to rattle his glass coffee table and probably his internal organs.

She turns the music off and says the second part of the spell.

All she can hear is his breathing. His glazed eyes flit over to where she’s standing. He’s got his palms pressed together tight, rubbing them together over and over again like he’s trying to wipe invisible grease from his skin or maybe blood. His eyes get bigger, but they’re just as bleary.

Even without the bass against his back, Jesse’s still shuddering. He barely raises his head. “Alex?”


	17. ...Rescue

Jesse reeks like gross, fancy British cheeses and cat piss, like he hasn’t been showering after cooking in the lab. His shirt is mysteriously and disgustingly damp. He’s got a knee jabbed into her side.

But, Alex doesn’t care at all because Jesse remembers her, and he’s hugging her semi-violently and crying into the crook of her neck. His fingers are digging into her lower back so hard she has to like seriously bite her tongue so she doesn’t let on that her skin might start looking like she’s in one of _those_ kinds of Lifetime movies. She’s got her hands in his hair, whispering “it’s okay” over and over and over again until the words almost sound like they’re in an ancient druid language. It’s probably just a side effect from studying those spells for so long.

After a few minutes, it’s like his whole body goes still and slack, like someone went in and jacked his skeleton. She pulls back to his pink and puffed-up face.

“Jesse, can you hear me?”

The dubstep he was playing was freaking loud as crap and she’s pretty concerned about his eardrums.

Thankfully, he nods.

“I know we have like a lot of stuff to talk about or whatever, but I kind of have a timeframe I’m working in. I’ll get to the good part: Do you want to get out of here? And I mean for like ever? I fixed the….”

She’d planned on explaining at least the gist of how her spell/hand magic combo works, thought she would need to convince him, but he’s nodding so franticly that she knows to shut up. This frees up some time, and she’s going to use it.

As she tries to get to her feet, he squeezes her forearms and whimpers. She has to physically pry him from her body, letting him know she’s only going to grab a couple of things before they leave. He doesn’t look too comforted, so she’s quick about finding his suitcase, packing him clothes and grabbing his duffel bag of cash from his bottom dresser drawer. Anything she takes will be replaced with the regeneration part of the spell, and she’s sure as hell isn’t going to take a pass on his hard-earned meth money.

Alex hauls the bags downstairs to find him still slumped on the floor. He doesn’t question her about the luggage, just nods when she asks if he’s ready to leave. The last bit of her spell is advanced enough that they don’t need to be touching, which is good since she needs to use her hands for magic-related things that include sparks coming out of them. It looks kind of freaky, so she lets him know what’s happening. He nods.

Jesse’s still nodding when they’re back in her room. He’s doing it when she offers him some water and a ham and cheese sandwich. Keeps it up when she asks if he like feels okay.

Something’s wrong because he hasn’t touched his food even though he’s bobbing his head up and down like a dashboard toy every time she asks if he’s hungry. She’s thinking maybe he’s just agreeing with everything.

“Jesse, talk to me,” she says.

She’s got him propped up in her chair with the window opened behind him to let out some of his stink. He stares at her, but everything else in his expression is like blank city, bitch. She needs help.

Alex turns on her T.V. to a random channel. “I’m gonna get Justin, okay?”

Of course, Jesse nods. It’s like his one skill right now. And she’s imagining the worst: she screwed up something, did something too early or late, must have done _something_ very, very wrong.

Justin’s lights are out and she has to say his name like ten times before he wakes up and switches on his green light saber lamp.

“Something’s wrong with Jesse,” she says.

She’s pretty sure she’s wearing her panic-face, and he seems to notice, because he’s not complaining as he follows her into the hall.

“When did you start wearing earplugs to bed?” she says.

He’s shuffling along the carpet in head-to-toe rumpled plaid pajamas, and squints. “I don’t normally. It’s just I wasn’t sure what kind of direction tonight was going to take, and I didn’t want to hear noises, you know,” he grimaces, “reunion noises.”

They’re already by her door, and Justin stops. “I’m not going to walk in on him naked, am I?”

“Justin, he’s practically like cata-sonic or whatever.”

“Catatonic?” he says. He shuffles his weight from one leg to the other. “So? Is he catatonic _and_ naked?”

She raises her arms in frustration. “Why would I take his clothes off if he can’t even talk?”

“I guess I was just thinking it’s been a whole year, and with Mason a member of the abstinence club and all. And,” he lifts his arms too, shaking his head, “I stopped trying to pretend to know what goes on in the inky black areas of your mind a long time ago.”

She smacks him on the chest. “Jeez, Justin, give me a little credit. What do I look like, some sort of junk diddler?”

“What exactly does a junk diddler look like?”

“I don’t know!” she says.

They’ve wasted enough time, and she pushes Justin in her room. Jesse is sitting where she left him with the sandwich in his lap, watching _SpongeBob_. She wishes he was just baked or something.

“What’s wrong with him?” Justin says.

“I have no idea. He said my name when I found him, and he seems to remember me, but he won’t say anything even when I like ask him a question. I think I like fried his brain.”

Just as she’s anxiously scratching her neck, Justin pulls her hand away.

“Relax,” he says, even toned. “Everything is fine. He just needs time to process all of his old memories of you with his more recent ones. Both need to acclimate in his conscience before he’s able to fully function. It might take him a while, and it’s also very likely he’ll come out of it a bit gradually. But, soon, he’ll be good as new.”

He sighs. “We’ll, aside from the possible PTSD. Did you not read the fine print of your own spell?”

“Uh, I created the thing, didn’t I?”

She’s not going to admit it, but she’s pretty embarrassed for not remembering such a major detail, and she sends Justin back to bed before she can come up with anymore stupid crap to say.

Attempting to breathe out her leftover Jesse-could-be-permanently-spaced-out jitters, she notices he’s still all rank and filthy. She takes her canister of Mountain Fresh Febreeze from her desk, sets his sandwich aside, and shields his face with one hand while she uses the other to mist him a bunch.

_Great_ , now he smells like someone stuck a couple of car air fresheners in a dirty litter box. Febreeze was _such_ a lie.

What he really needs is a shower, but she doesn’t trust him to stand up on his own for that long. She also doesn’t want to sleep with the window open because it’s about like eighty-something degrees outside and she’s already sweating.

“I guess I _am_ undressing you,” she says.

She hooks her arm around his back and pulls him up so he’s leaning on her shoulder. With her as his literal crutch, she’s able to stagger the both of them to the bathroom like they’re in the middle of the slowest, quietest, weirdest three-legged race ever. Once she gets Jesse kind of secure on the top of the closed toilet seat, she starts to fill up the tub with warm water.

The sound of the tap is a repetitive, soothing sound that makes her zone out for a little while because all of those missed hours of sleep are basically begging her to pass out. The water is pretty high when she manages to snap out of it, turn off the faucet, and she’s thinking this next thing is most likely going to be the hard part.

She’s never undressed someone for a practical reason, like having someone catch on fire or whatever. So, she tries not to linger too long, both hands and eyes, when she yanks his t-shirt off, then his shoes, socks, and jeans. With a super embarrassing tremor in her fingers, she has to lift him up with one arm under his and pull his boxers down with her other hand until the fabric’s past his thighs, and they just drop to his ankles. Jesse’s chest-to-chest with her now, almost full weight, and his _parts_ are touching her, and, _good grief_ , people might as well just start calling her a junk diddler.

Though she doesn’t actually fondle him, just gracelessly and somewhat gently drops him inside the bathtub. It splashes enough water on her camisole to make wearing it ridiculously pointless and the floor is totally puddled-up. She doesn’t want to be frustrated, but she kind of is considering she hasn’t had a normal amount of sleep in months and the room’s steaming up like no other and it’s almost _too_ good seeing him like this again in all of his wet, tattooed glory. Kind of subconsciously, with just a _little_ guilt, she adds an image of him idly smoking in the tub, like beckoning her inside, ready to party, to her diddle bank. She can’t help it.

Alex rubs her eyes and plucks her bottle of jasmine body wash from the toiletry shelf. She shakes almost half of the bottle on to him, lets it soak for a minute or two before she grabs her loofa. On second thought, she’s not going to skimp on the product. She dumps in some of Justin’s stupid, pricey, lavender-scented bath beads. Except they’re not bath beads because she didn’t think those made bubbles. She’s too tired to mentally label bathing accessories, grateful that Jesse’s at least aware to the point he can sit up on his own as she starts scrubbing his chest.

Once he’s fairly sudsy, she moves on to his arms and shoulders. She accidentally elbows one of Max’s toys in as she’s working on Jesse’s back, but taking it out now would set off too many find-the-soap jokes in her head.

So, she goes to his feet, and manages to knock in another toy. Max must have had a party or something in here because she doesn’t remember this much of his stuff in the bathroom before. He left a big plastic sail boat on the mat with a little dude inside wearing a scuba suit. She tosses the guy in the bath, and uses the boat to scoop some water out. Tipping Jesse’s head back, she pours it over him. Since his hair’s wet, she lathers in her shampoo, and rinses it out the same way.

She takes a cautious sniff. While the smell is only barely lingering, she decides another coat of body wash wouldn’t hurt or anything and she soaps up his chest again.

“Yo,” he says.

Alex yanks the loofa back with enough force to fall on her butt. She’s way too stunned to say anything. Also, all of her clothes are totally soaked.

“I’m fucking back.” Jesse’s blinking a lot, slumps back until he slides down deeper into the water, almost chin-level. Sitting up again, he coughs and wipes a foamy hand across his face. He glances down. “Yo, I’m naked.”

His voice is thick and sleepy-sounding, and it makes Alex hot in a way she doesn’t need right now.

“Yep,” she says. Because, really, what else is there?

He tips his head to the side in the most innocent gesture she’s ever seen from him. “Are you for real giving me a bubble bath?”

They may have switched brains because she nods. Clearing her throat, she adjusts back on her knees. “You still remember me, right?”

“Uh, _yeah_ ,” he says. He lifts the floating hammerhead shark toy, giving her one of his what-the-hell expressions she’d honestly missed a lot. “Seriously?”

“It fell in,” she says.

Jesse squints. “Hey, I think I saw you on my T.V. a couple a times, like I think your life’s like a show too. I didn’t really remember you from before or anything too much, just kind of pieces of like memories and shit.”

So, she guesses that’s one question with sort of an answer. Though she has no idea how or why this is possible, and she has like zero intentions of telling Justin in case she accidentally made this junk happen. Instead, she lifts the hair off her neck, and tries to think of the best next step.

Jesse’s still holding the hammerhead, making it swim just below the surface with the fin sticking out. He pulls out the scuba guy and makes the shark gobble him down, slamming the plastic together, making soft, fake screaming sounds. She feels a little shallow, but it’s sort of disappointing how anti-climactic his cleared brain fog is, like they’re not making any of those reunion noises yet.

She reaches out to touch his shoulder and he jerks his chin up.

He slowly looks around the room, narrowing and widening his eyes like he just woke up. “Yo, how am even here? Is this like temporary?”

“Well,” she says. She pulls back to rock on her ankles. “I guess now is as good as any to fill you in on the junk I didn’t get to say at your house. I just gotta figure out where to start.”

She gets a sudden wave of emotions, the kind she gets when she’s beyond sleep deprived and getting straight-up loopy, and she almost cries a little. He’s really here.

She takes a prolonged blink, and tries to clear her thoughts. “So, I used a spell to get you back. It’s different than the one I used the first time, which means you can stay here as long as you want without your body falling apart like a zombie or whatever, and I can use my wand around you. And when I say here, like you can go wherever because I know I’d be pissed at me for what I did. You could move to New Zealand or Amsterdam. Or if you don’t hate seeing my face, I could always help you get your own apartment in New York. It’s whatever you want.”

“I thought you said there wasn’t anything you could do that would let me stay.” He doesn’t seem angry, just confused.

“There wasn’t anything. I actually made the spell I used. It took me a long time, but I did a bunch of research and stuff and was able to mix hand magic with a brand new spell to fix all the kinks.” She fiddles with the loofa. “I’ve basically stayed up the past month or so, and I’ve read enough spell books to probably make my third-grade-self like kick me in the shins and call me a dweeb. I’m even carrying a library card in my wallet. Thug life, yo.”

Jesse makes this breathy little laugh, and it’s amazing to be this close with him smiling. He’s serious again too soon, but she feels like he makes it up by placing his hand on her arm. “You for real made your own spell? Did like all the work, and got me out of that shithole forever?”

“It took me like an entire year, and I still want you to know how sorry I am that I had to make you go back at all, like you _have_ to know that,” she says. She might be crying just a tiny bit.  

His smile is warm and understanding. “Yeah, shit, of course. You know, I’m just grateful and shit that…wait…did you say an entire year? I’ve only been gone for like two months.”

“Oh, right.” She casually wipes the corners of her eyes. “Not to like throw more stuff at you than you need, but it’s 2011 here. You know, time passes differently in our ‘worlds.’”

He kind of dazedly shakes his head. “So fucking weird.”

“I don’t want to sound like I’m repeating myself, but do you swear you remember everything? I just want to make sure I did all my magic crap right.”

“Yeah, I got it, yo. You’re Alex Russo. You were born in New York, and you’re a wizard, and you have two wizard brothers. You’re parents own a sub shop, and Harper is your best friend. You got like stars tattooed on your ribs, and you hate raisins, and you’re favorite position’s cowgirl. You had some douchebag boyfriend, but now you’re like in love with me and shit.”

“Of course, I love you,” she says. It’s the first time she’s ever said that to anyone, but she’s still more concerned with doing a legit double check on her spell. She wants to be responsible for once. “So, you’re not feeling nauseous or lightheaded or dizzy?”

“Nah,” he says. “Yo, did you just tell me you….”

She braces herself against the lip of the tub, holds her hand out. “Nothing seems weird to you, like something small like you remember the ceiling looking higher or my hair or my eyes being a different color or anything like that?”

She hopes he doesn’t think she’s acting crazy. According to her books, these kinds of post-magic questions are super important to the whole process and effectiveness of your work, which are phrases she’d never imagine ever caring about.

He throws her a kind of cautious glance, looking away. “I didn’t want to be weird about it, but uh,” he makes honking gestures in front of his chest, “I don’t remember your tits being so big.”

“I know, right?” she says, smiling. “It took these puppies like seventeen years to grow in, but they’re pretty awesome now. I went up a whole cup size. See.”

She grabs his wrist and pretty much smacks his hand against her boob. Once it’s there, she gets a nice, warm palm print on her top, and he’s not at all shy about groping her. She only lightly nudges him in the right direction before his fingers slip underneath.

Alex leans into his touch. “Would it be cool if I got in there with you?”

He smirks. “Not yet. You gotta finish giving me a bath.”

She brings her eyebrows together, but she goes back to scrubbing him up anyway. “You’re for real getting off on me giving you a bath?”

She does a broad stroke from collarbone to thigh, skipping his crotch completely on purpose, and he makes this cute pouty face as she’s running it along his knee. Just to be a tease, she makes the same path in the opposite direction.

“Yo, what the hell,” he says, almost whining.

Alex chuckles, and bops him on the forehead with the loofa. “Tell me how in the world this is sexy.”

Just as she moves to softly smack him again, he grabs her arm. “Well, if you were doing this shit right, it’d be fucking sexy as shit. This is at like the pinnacle of my MILF spank bank.”

“That’s kind of gross.”

He scoffs. “Says the chick who tried to fuck me in the ass with her wand.”

She attempts to wiggle her arm free, but he’s got it pretty good. “The fact that you had to say ‘try’ means I wasn’t really trying, because if I was then I would have.”

“Yo, I don’t even know what you just said.”

“Me either,” she says.

He smiles, and she does too, and it’s the most comfortable thing she’s felt in a long time. Even if she’s in wet pajamas and she’s got a twenty-five year old with mommy issues looking at her like he expects something.

Fine, if the MILF scenario is what he wants, then she’s going to give it to him like a boss. He’s always been up for all of her games.

She drops the loofa, tilting her chest almost into the bathtub, and she tries to come up with the most chipper voice imaginable. Like she wants it so damn sweet, grocery stores would need to bottle it as pancake syrup, and label it “Porno 50s Housewife.”

“Jesse!” she says. It comes out in mock shock. “I can’t believe how dirty you got yourself today. You know I don’t like it when you’re dirty. Didn’t I tell you, young man, that dirty boys are punished?”

He gives her a confused frown. “What the hell are you even…?”

Before he can finish whatever that was supposed to be, she starts flicking his nipple, _hard_. He gapes, and jolts up, still firmly holding her arm.

“Do _not_ speak like that in front of me. That’s a _bad_ word, Jesse. And, you were being so good for me. You took a bath like a big boy, like a good boy. Do you know what good boys get?”

She presses her thumb into the same nipple, making tiny circles that get him groaning as his eye turn a darker tint of blue. He shakes his head.

“Good boys who take their baths get extra-special treats. _But_ ,” she says. She stops all touching to let her limb dangle. “If you want your treat, you need to be a big boy and show me where you want me to touch you.”

Alex really hopes that wasn’t _too_ much, like kind of too icky or like too Odysseus or oedipal or whatever they call that. Everything seems to be very okay once he sucks in a breath, actually trembling as he takes her hand past the bubbles to rest on his cock that’s like also trembling in its own delicious way.

“Jesse.” Her own voice drips in, a drop deeper than she needs, but she wants to be in there with him _so much_. Licking her mouth, she wraps her fingers around the base and tries to shove down enough horny tension to stumble back into character. “Mmm, you _are_ a big boy.”

Ok, so that was kind of a cheap, standard X-rated line. She needs to step it up.

She starts stroking him nice and slow, making kind of a corkscrew motion, tenting her palm at the head. “Do you like this, Jesse? Do you like it when I’m naughty?”

He’s got the back of his head pressed into the wall, nodding against the tiles.

“Are you gonna come for me like a good boy?” She squeezes him with gusto, knowing his reaction.

“Fuck,” he says through his teeth.

“Young man, didn’t I tell you not to say bad words. That is _not_ a nice word at all.” She flashes her darkest smirk, tightening her hold and shaking him. “Do you have anything to say that’s nice?”       

Jesse jerks up, slack-jawed and moaning.

There’s no way he can last much more of this. So, she starts pumping him faster. He grinds into her fist.

“Come on, Jesse. I want to hear you say something sweet for me.” She brings her lips close to his ear. “Tell me you’re a good boy, Jesse.”

His like entire torso shudders like he’s got electricity inside, pressing his lips together, shaking his head.

“ _Yes_ , Jesse, I need to hear you say it.” She pinches the tip.

He sobs out a mangled mess of letters, and Alex can’t remember the last time she wanted something so badly. It doesn’t matter that he’s in like a different state of mind or whatever. If she can get him saying he’s good now, maybe one day, someday, some time he can say something like that without an aching erection. He deserves to believe it.  

“Come on, be a big boy, and use your words.”

His chest shudders as he grips the side of the tub. “I’m a good boy.”

“Again,” she says. She can tell from the way Jesse’s shoving his hips that he’s super close, only a few touches away from the brink.

Jesse arches his back. “ _Oh_ …fuck, I’m a good boy.”

Alex presses her mouth to his temple, ignoring the f-bomb, gliding her hand down in a tight stroke. “It makes me so happy watching you like this, almost there. Oh Jesse, be my good boy, be….”

His whole body convulses as he softly calls out her name. She slides her hand up and down through the aftershocks and kisses out the breath he’s trying to get back.

After a little while, he pulls back, still wheezing. “Shit, I haven’t like come that hard since…like Amsterdam. Yo, that was awesome.”

“You’re welcome or whatever.” She’s got like a legit fire in her gut, and hearing him basically tell her she’s better in bed than Andrea is just stoking the flames. “Now, can I get in there or what?”

He’s grinning and pulling her into his body when she feels like maybe that fire exploded. Actually, it feels more like someone decked her in the stomach. It hurts.

“Crap,” she says.

She bolts to her feet and dashes to the toilet before she’s puking. She’d been so worried about his cross dimensional wellbeing that she forgot there was like a chance she could get sick too. Luckily, she’s only had popcorn and lemonade for the past twenty four hours, so it’s not too disgusting.

“Gross,” he says.

She wants to flip him off or something until she feels his hand rubbing her shoulder and he’s holding her hair back. Lukewarm water is dripping on her wet clothes and she’s vomiting in front of him and she’s pretty mortified.

Between heaves, she’s able to get out an “I’m sorry” and “Didn’t want to spend your first night back like this” and “Multi-universe motion sickness totally sucks.”

He tells her to shut up so she can get all of it out already, and that actually helps. She’s done, and he helps clean up the bathroom, and she hangs up all the towels they had to use to mop up the floors. She lets him use the unopened tooth brush she got from the dentist, and it’s strangely comforting doing something so homey like brushing their teeth at the same time.

It’s kind of pointless though once they’re in her room and he notices the snack she made him.

Jesse takes a monster of a bite. “Shit, a bath _and_ a sandwich.” He looks up at the T.V. “ _And_ you have _SpongeBob_ on. Yo, you’re like a MILF, but like just not a mom yet.”

“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says.

Alex tugs off her dripping pajamas, letting them _thwack_ against the carpet in a heap. She definitely notices the way he watches her over his sandwich as she slips on a slouchy V-neck, and it’s all kinds of flattering and awesome.  

Falling onto the mattress, she wedges herself under the covers. It’s almost funny how quickly he gets the television off and starts towards the bed.

“Can you hit the lights?”

He looks a little offended, but flips them off anyway. His voice is hovering right over her face. “Yo, did I say something wrong? I mean, like it’s your turn. I’ll do whatever you want. Like that MILF shit was just a joke, kind of, but like in a good way.”

“No, man, you’re fine,” she says. She pats his chest. “I hate to be _that_ girl, but if I feel like if I don’t pass out right now, I’m just gonna hurl again. Sorry.”

He’s silent for a few seconds. “Don’t say sorry. I would have spent the night with a motherfucking stereo if it wasn’t for you. And like I’ve never heard you turn you down sex before, so you must be hella dead, you know, from like looking up ways to save me and shit.”

She can feel him snuggle up against her, and she _is_ pretty dead. Her eyelids are like weighing her whole face down and she can almost tell she’s drifting off, but she manages to whisper, “There’s always morning sex.”

He laughs, and she smiles with her eyes closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is the last. I actually wrote this story about two months ago, but I'm editing and revising as I go. One more left!


	18. Watch Me Move. I Do Anything.

Alex wakes up in late morning lighting with the dizzy, heady feeling of Jesse, naked, sucking soul-searing kisses along her inner thigh. She lifts her hips slightly off the bed, and he glances up all predatory, wolfish glimmering-eyed face between her legs, fingers trailing to tease her to the point she’s quivering and whispering _please, Jesse_. He’s quick to replace hands with lips, doing filthy, incredible things with his tongue. She digs her heels into the mattress, and he gobbles her down like he’s an actual freaking wolf.

By the time she’d be a mess of like deer parts and blood in a field on the Discovery Channel, Jesse’s softly rubbing her legs that are still obscenely splayed open for him. She’s trying to like scrape up her brain goo so she can focus again, because, _damn_ that was good.

“Yo, good morning.” Jesse licks his chops, smirking. “I still the best?”

Alex is pretty sure he’s talking about a comment she may have mewled out while gripping his shoulders, basically sitting on his face on that hotel balcony in Amsterdam. She’s can’t remember her exact words or anything, but it was something about him going down on her better than anyone ever.

“Title’s still yours, dude.” She stretches her back out, popping it, relaxing against her pillow. “Not that you’d have anyone to compete with.”

Jesse props his chin on her knee. “What do you mean?”

She has no idea why she actually said that out loud, because she for real didn’t at all need to have a chat with Jesse about her like year of celibacy. It’s not like she wants him to think she screwed around, but waiting for a dude in another dimension who you weren’t even sure you were ever going to see again in the flesh sounds kind of desperate and mondo lame.

“Uh, I meant you’re like so awesome, nobody can compete…or whatever.”

He makes this sort of uneasy smile. “How many nobody’s we talking, here? ‘Cause like the last time I checked it was just that Fonzie wannabe with the hard-on for like switchblade combs and hair gel.”

“Yeah,” she says. She nervously picks at her sheets. “It’s still just him, in like that…category.”

“Yo, it’s cool if you like hooked up with guys while I was gone. It’s been a fucking year and you’re like seventeen. So, you know, I’m not judging you. I guess I’m just being nosey and shit, and kind of wanted to know how many….” He lifts his hand, making a vague gesture.

She gets it anyway. Screwing her mouth to the side, she lets her eyes linger on the ceiling and tries to get this out as casually as possible. “Since you mention it, I like kind of took some time off in the hookup department.”

 _Hook up department_? Who is she, a middle-aged news chick talking about the scary dangers of teenage sex?

Alex needs to blurt something else out to erase that last thing from the world. “So, like, there’s been zero nobody’s up in my business.”

 _Wow_ , that was _so_ not any better.

“You like didn’t even go out on a date?”

She keeps her eyes on the ceiling. “Well, I did see this one guy for a couple of weeks, about a month ago. But, he’s really conservative and didn’t want to go farther than kissing.”

“What’s this dude’s problem?”

“He’s…a…kind of a werewolf.”

Jesse’s chin shifts on her kneecap. “You mean he had like personality disorder shit?”

Alex presses her thumb between her eyebrows. “No, he was actually a legit werewolf. And, he has some control issues. He didn’t want to get all….” She does a clawing motion with her hands. “When we we’re like doing it, and it end up like a Rob Zombie remake of _Beauty and the Beast_.”

Jesse chuckles. He’s stroking her calf in a nice, soothing way. “What about like before that? There’s been a shit ton of time between last June and a month ago.”

“I didn’t really go out that much.” Alex makes her own meaningless gesture with her hand. “I guess…I just missed you.”

She glances at him, and he’s full on smiling now. “Missed me enough to not get laid for a year even though you knew I was with someone else?”

“Yeah,” Alex says. She covers her face with her arms because she can just _tell_ something sappy is about to pop out of her mouth. “Jesse, I’d go on like a ten year sex fast if it meant I could protect you.”

She can feel him moving around until his breath is on her shoulder, and he’s somehow manages to wedge his head between her arms to pepper her face with kisses. She laughs, and he pulls at her elbows until she’s looking at him again.

Jesse slips his hands up her shirt, grazing his lower lip with those beautiful, dental-porn worthy teeth of his. “Tell me what you want.”

She hesitates, weighing if this is worth asking. “It’s…a little weird.”

His nose crinkles, but he’s still smiling. “You want to bend me over and nail me with your wand?”

“Sit here.” She pats the spot next to her on the bed where the sheets have been kicked down.

He looks confused, but does what she says anyway.

“I kind of have a confession,” she says. She turns to face him on her side, nervously smiling, hand on his chest. “I had these dreams about you that I’m pretty positive were like visions. I sort of watched you…react to seeing me again on your T.V., which I still have no idea how that’s possible, but you seemed to like it a lot. And, sometimes, you’d…uh, touch yourself. But, I never got to the good part in those dreams, and it was super frustrating just seeing you start with no…payoff. So, I was thinking…maybe…”

Jesse lifts his eyebrows. “You want to watch me jerk off?”

Flashes of zippers and flushed expressions and palming himself flit through her head, maybe to kind of cement in the idea that this is absolutely what she wants. She nods.

“Why?” He chuckles again.

“‘Cause you look unreal when you’re horny.” She leans to half-way hover over him, kissing at his jaw. “Come on, let me watch.”

He takes a breath, letting his palm slide slowly down until he cups his length. His eyes are on her as he starts to gently stroke. It doesn’t take long for him to twitch and harden up for her, and he breaks out a cocky leer. “You like this?”

She nods.

But, she only lasts another four or five seconds, one gritty moan, and the sight of his slick fingers before she bats his hand away and pins him against the mattress with a knee on either side of his hips. He’s grinning up at her like he totally called it.

Then it’s like so _much_ sex happening that she has to get them subs to refuel. She just strolls down to the kitchen in his red shirt with some metallic gold pattern because her parents had let her know they were going to visit her mom’s family in Mexico, and they had to leave at like seven AM to beat traffic. Assembling the sandwiches together, she couldn’t care less when Justin gives her his prudish, judgment face with his heavy-duty headphones on as he messes with his Jim Bob Sherwood farm…model…diorama whatchamacallit.

She and Jesse demolish the food before she jumps back on him. The rest of the afternoon is a naked mess of different positions and trying to get him to make as many gravelly, frenzied, Jesse sounds as she can. By the time it’s dark, they’ve somehow managed to wind up on the floor, watching something about Peruvian snails on the National Geographic Channel, sharing a bag of Funyuns.  

Jesse’s smoking with no window open because she’d learned a hand magic technique that eliminates the smell. While she likes that Justin will have like one less thing to complain about, the scent is like a package deal when it comes to Jesse and it relaxes her in a weird way. When he tips ash on his empty plate, she steals the cigarette and takes a couple of drags.

He snags it back. “What the hell, yo? Since when do you smoke?”

“I don’t inhale or anything. It’s just something I started doing after I had to send you back.” She shrugs against the rug. “It made me feel better, like reminded me of you.”

“Yo, I’m here now. So, no more of this shit ‘cause it’s like ten times more addictive than weed and like way less natural, and I don’t want to be the dick that got you started.”

She makes a sour expression. “Is it bad that I like the way they taste? Does it mean I’m like already hooked even though the crap’s not in my lunges?”

Jesse rolls onto his chest, squashing the cigarette against the rim of the plate. “Like how many did you smoke before you started liking it?”

“None,” she says. She holds on to his arm to absently caress her fingers across his scorpion tattoo. “I liked it when you kissed me, so like the cigarettes kind of, I don’t know, were like the best replacement I had.”

He smiles. “Psycho.”

Before she can say anything, his lips are on hers, tongue slipping in her mouth. This is way better because it’s more than just her weird cigarette kink. It’s like one of the many parts of him she has again, being with him like this. Her hand reaches down to a different part of him she’s missed, and it strikes up another bout of naked time that leaves him with rug burn on his ass, elbows, and also somehow his forehead.

They end up avoiding clothes until Thursday once he’s chaffing pretty badly, and she decides they could use a breather. He hasn’t seen most of the loft, so she gives him a short tour, and they hang out on the terrace with Vanilla Cokes and her laptop.

“We should get you a place,” she says.

He stretches back in the lounge chair. “Yo, of course you’re trying to get rid of me like the second my balls start to like wear off.”

“Uh, eww?” She’s pulled up a bunch of listings in his price range, which is high, though it is still New York. “I just want you to have somewhere to stay when my parents get home so you’re not only in my room. I’m not trying to kick you out or anything. You know you’re not just a slab a meat to me.”

Alex grins, rubbing his thigh playfully. But, she strays too close to his fun zone, because he grits his teeth.

“Seriously, yo, I’m legit tapped out and like sore as shit. Be careful.”

“My bad,” she says. She clicks through a couple of virtual tours. “So, what do you want in an apartment? Or were you thinking like a townhouse or a brownstone or a condo?”

“I barely know how those are supposed to be different, like I don’t care,” he says. “It would be pretty cool or whatever if like it was close by though.”

Alex finds a good amount of available places in the area, figuring in different commute times when she sees something so perfect it’s almost scary.

She slaps him on the knee. “Dude, there’s an open apartment six doors down from mine. Oh _my_ gosh, the Schmidt’s moved out? They had the most annoying cockatoo that sang the _Reading Rainbow_ theme song in the middle of the night at like AC/DC volume. But, they have like tons of windows in the living room, and a fireplace. And, I might have sort of killed their bird with a spell, but that’s not important. This apartment is perfect for you.”

Jesse is suspiciously quiet, giving her a sheepish look.

“Do you not want to get your own place in New York?”

“Nah,” Jesse says. His eyes get wide, and he sits up, putting a hand on her back. “Yo, I meant like I do want to live in New York, but I don’t want to leave here like right now. I just, want to, like….”

He glances at her computer, chewing on his lower lip, eyebrows raised. “It’s just with all the shit I’ve been through, I kind of like…being around you all the time. You can call me lame or whatever, but I don’t really want to sleep like by myself just yet.”

It’s both terrifying and awesome that he can be this honest with her because she feels like this fragile, candid side of him isn’t something he shares with a lot of people.

“Dude, no problem.” She rests her cheek on his shoulder. “I’ll be your bedroom buddy all day, every day.”

He kisses the top of her head, and they end up watching YouTube videos of dumbasses on skateboards until Justin invites them inside to eat.

Justin made breakfast for dinner, which she loves and he only tolerates. She’s got warning bells going off in her head. But, it just turns out to be Justin’s way of bringing up her promise about Juliet, which he asks when Jesse goes to the kitchen for more bacon. She says she’s in.

After waiting for Jesse to fall asleep, she sneaks into the lair for a six hour research binge that gives them a new spell that’s so good Justin’s actually embarrassed he didn’t do something like this sooner. He tells her he’s going to look it over some more before he uses it. Then he waits almost an entire day before he gets the nerve to do it already. It works, even at long range as they designed, and he spends the rest of Friday talking to Juliet on the phone. She’s in Transylvania, but she plans on flying into New York by Sunday.

On Saturday, they meet up with Harper at ‘Gurtbarn since Alex missed Fro-Yo Fun-day Monday, and Harper’s actually pretty psyched to see Jesse. She even like initiates a high-five, and only gives Alex _one_ lecture about safe sex. Alex calls it a success.

Later in the day, she makes Jesse start the apartment buying process before it’s sold. He might not have a real social security card or form of employment. But, he has mounds and mounds of cash, and that shuts up the realtor like nobody’s business. It also helps that Alex learned a sort of disguise spell that makes Jesse look like a different person to anyone who isn’t a wizard. She’s not sure how popular _Breaking Bad_ might get, and she had an entire year to think about it, so it seemed like a quick like safety measure. She can say it every day before he goes out because the spell’s got about a twelve hour shelf life before it wears off. But, even with the paperwork done and his apartment under his fake name, Jesse Paul, he stays in her bed, which she is totally okay with.

They start talking to some of her friends from the Freedom Tunnel for job openings. Line actually knows a girl who dates a guy who owns a funky little wood workshop with legit carpenters. He’s actually looking for someone like an apprentice because he’s planning on getting some sort of secret surgery in the near future and wants to teach someone to help run the place. Jesse wants to know if this surgery has anything to do with cancer, and Line promises it’s like a cosmetic, TMI thing he shouldn’t look into too hard.

Sometime around Sunday morning, they’re playing the new version of Mortal Kombat in her room when Jesse sets his controller down.

“Is tonight when my show comes on? You know, the one I was in?”

Alex shuts off the game, and tells him he should probably be sitting down. She explains how the duplicating part of her spell worked in the most clear, delicate way she can.

“So, there’s another me still living there? Like if I watched tonight, I’d see what would have happened to like the me that I am if I’d stayed?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But, I’m not sure you really want to watch something like that. It could be mondo disturbing on a lot of different levels.”

He scratches his jaw. “Would you be okay if I did though? I don’t know why, but it feels like something I should do even if it’s shitty.”

“I can’t tell you what to do,” she says.

She does still ask him a few hundred times or so if this is really what he wants to do up until the moment she’s lounging in his lap in the living room armchair while Justin and Juliet sit with an arm’s length between them on the couch like a couple of weirdos. Juliet’s been back for a few hours, which she spent mooning over Justin as they called each other cutesy, gross pet names. For dinner, she’d somehow managed to find some horrifying place that actually delivered salads. Alex and Jesse took a pass, enjoying a pretty delicious meal of s’more Pop-Tarts and salted caramel ice cream and a crap-ton of jelly beans. It completely disgusted Juliet, which may have been the best part about eating it all.

Alex has a nice sugar rush going on, swinging her legs off the chair when she notices Jesse’s sniffing a ton.

“Yo, why does this room smell like vanilla and like dead bodies?”

Juliet raises her glass of cucumber water. “That would be me. I’m a vampire.”

“What?” Every muscles in Jesse’s body seizes up.

“Don’t worry,” Justin says. “She’s on a strictly animal blood diet, so you’re safe.”

“Absolutely. Plus, I wouldn’t dream of feeding on you after Alex was great enough to come up with a spell to turn me back from a hundred year old woman, and now I’m not wandering around the Transylvania forests with a bad hip and bunions.”

“Right,” Jesse says. His eyes are still wide, but she can feel him relax. “Yo, it’s like I’m in a setup of a shitty joke, like two wizards, a vampire, and an ex-drug dealer walk into a bar.”

Max pops up from behind the couch. “Ooh, what happens next? Can I come? Am I one of the two wizards?”

He plops down in the only empty chair, mouth gaping open in alarm, whispering, “Am I already there now?”

“Shit.” Jesse chuckles. “This kid makes Badger sound like Mr. White.”

“Ouch,” Justin says. “That was a burn _and_ a great _Breaking Bad_ reference. Can I use that one?”

“Whatever, man,” Jesse says, shrugging. “Why is the show called _Breaking Bad,_ anyway?”

Justin sits up straight like he’s in school or something. “Well, during the Pilot episode, we see Walter withdrawing his life’s savings from the bank in order to afford the RV where you cook your product. When he hands you the money, you ask him why he wants to go into business with you. He refuses to give you a straight answer.”

“So, you say, and I quote,” Justin slumps over and cocks out his arm in a pretty hilarious attempt at thug or whatever the hell he’s doing, “‘Nah, come on…man, some straight like you, giant stick up his ‘a-word’ all of a sudden at age like 60, he’s just going to break bad?’”

“Aww, look at my little Schmootzy, memorizing lines. He’s got such a cute noggin,” Juliet says. “Butterfly kiss!”

They blink their eyelashes together, and Alex makes a gaging noise.

“Oh, come on. I had to watch the two of you guys loafing around the loft half-naked for the past four days,” Justin says.

Max is chewing on a candy bar he pulled out unwrapped from his pocket with his legs propped on the coffee table. “Yeah, and also that one time Justin accidentally saw Jesse _totally_ naked in the kitchen when Justin went down for a warm glass of milk in the middle of the night and then shrieked like a little girl. Then Justin told me about how awkward it was the next day and how I should never ever tell anyone.”

“Max!” Justin says. He’s already blushing. “You just said it in front of everyone.”

Juliet comfortingly pats Justin’s shoulder. “It’s okay, honey. I’m sure no one cares you got to see Jesse naked. I mean, that you were able to see him naked. What I meant to say….”

“Hey-oh!” Alex says, laughing. She raises an eyebrow and smirks at Juliet. “Should I start locking my bedroom windows?”

“No!” Juliet says. She clears her throat. “Well, speaking as someone who’s lived over a century, I’m enough of an adult to admit that I find Jesse to be a very thought-provoking, entertaining, tortured soul who I enjoy watching on _Breaking Bad_ purely as a character.”

Juliet sips from her glass, looking away. “You know, those attractive blue eyes of his don’t hurt either.”

“What has gotten into you?” Justin says.

They start some hushed argument over a couch cushion, but all Alex can hear is something about living outside for too long.

Alex squeezes Jesse’s leg, giving him a sly smile. “I so said you had a fan club.”

He smiles, but he seems distracted. Opening his mouth, he stops when Justin hushes everyone.

“It’s starting!” Justin says. He unmutes the T.V.

Alex drapes her arm over his shoulder, playing with his hair in a way she hopes can make him feel even a tiny bit less stressed out if anything major happens.

The opening scene is of Walt finding security cameras in the lab, and giving them the middle finger.

Jesse laughs. “Dick deserves it.”

He watches with a kind of interested, mild worry when Skyler goes on and on about calling the cops once she’s seen Walt’s black eye and thinks he’s in danger. But, of course, Walt talks her out of it, and they go back to their conversation about buying the car wash. It cuts to the inside of a swanky room Alex doesn’t recognize aside from the lady wearing all purple.

Jesse nudges her. “Who’s that?”

“Marie, Hank’s wife,” Alex says.

“Who?”

“Hank, like Walt’s brother-in-law, the DEA asshole who you wanted to go towards the light.”

She was trying to make a joke, rile him up a little by making such a direct quote, but he’s pretty wrapped up in watching Marie almost walk in on Hank with porn on. They have an argument about rocks. Then Jesse and Walt do a cook in the lab. Jesse asks Walt if he wants to go-karting with him, but Walt says he can’t. There’s this whole thing with Walt and Saul and Skyler in Walt’s apartment as they discuss the car wash for money laundering.

After a scene that strongly suggests Marie went all klepto on some fancy spoon in an open house, they show Jesse go-karting alone. His face is red, and he’s screaming. The scene changes to Jesse parking in front of his house. Some guy just strolls by Jesse with Jesse’s toaster oven, acting like it’s no big deal. Jesse slowly walks into his living room. And the Jesse in _her_ living room wraps an arm around her waist.

His house is trashed. It looks a million times worse than the last episode. There’s so much crap on the ground, you can’t even see the floors. The walls are marred with graffiti. But, that’s not so bad compared with the people inside. They look homeless, almost like the junkies from the crack den Jesse went to after Jane’s death. They’re carving things on the walls, jerkily staggering around as a large group of them beat the shit out of each other. A couple is having violent sex on the floor with the dude’s back bleeding as this drugged-up chick claws him up with her nails.

Jesse on the screen doesn’t seem to give a shit. He’s nodding his head with the music on his stereo that’s still throwing neon lights over the room. Lighting up a cigarette, he takes a seat on the couch and closes his eyes.

A commercial comes on and Jesse’s shaking. His lips are pressed tightly together.

She leans closer to his face. “Hey, want to go to my room?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, I-I’m fine.”

Alex doesn’t think fighting him on this will help, so she soothingly runs her fingers up and down the back of his shirt. The rest of the episode focuses mostly on Marie’s issues and the car wash. They don’t show him again until several scenes later. Jesse’s throwing balled up money at someone’s unconscious body until he manages to get one in the guy’s mouth. He throws the rest of the bills in the air and the group cheers and scrambles around on the floor. Tyrus is stationed in his car outside the house. It’s obvious he’s keeping an eye on Jesse for Fring, like if they need to take care of this problem if Jesse can’t get his shit together.

The idea prickles dread across her skin like static shock. She can’t even pay attention to Walt and Skyler’s chat about champagne. Isn’t until the credits come on that she realizes how the room is hella quiet.

Jesse bumps her with his knee. “Let’s bounce.”

Alex nods, says goodnight to everyone. At the top of the stairs, she overhears Max excitingly announce, “You guys! Alex’s friend was on the show! He’s the same person!” She rolls her eyes, kicking her slippers off when she’s bulldozed into bed.

Jesse’s kiss is almost smothering, like making her lightheaded in less of a swooning way and more of a she might pass out kind of way. His mouth is desperate and sloppy, moving to suck along her neck. He thrusts his hand down the front of her pajama pants.

“Jesse.” It comes out as a moan. She hates it, but she doesn’t think this right after is like healthy or whatever. “Jesse, stop for a sec.”

He cringes, the skin under his eyes a little flushed. “Did I do something wrong? Shit, please don’t be mad at me. I don’t want to go back.”

“Whoa,” she says. “Jesse, I told you, I’m never sending you back. Don’t ever think that, okay?”

He chokes back a sob, shoving his forehead into her shoulder, shivering.

“Jesse.” She holds him while he cries. It’s like short, sporadic bursts. By the time his breathing has evened out, she rubs the back of his neck.

He rests against the hollow of her throat. “I fucking love you.”

“Same here,” she says, smiling. “Just take it easy. You’re totally safe and everything, alright?”

She can feel him nod.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

His head shakes back and forth against her collarbone.

Digging around under her covers, she pulls out the remote and flips the T.V. on. Discovery Channel is doing a segment on Caribbean reef sharks, and she’s hoping the noises of sloshing water and re-enacted scuba breathing can lull him to sleep. She’s also pretty psyched that Shark Week’s started.

Jesse cranes his neck just in time to see a great white tearing into one of the smaller reef sharks, blood pluming out like red underwater clouds.

“Sick,” he says. He settles back down, almost too much on top of her as he watches from her chest.

He’s all boney and warm and calm. It starts to get crazy comfortable, and even with brand new shark-filled carnage on the screen, she’s dozing off.

Her pants are gently tugged down, and when she opens her eyes, he’s grinning.

“Yo, don’t fall asleep. Play with me.”

Jesse’s shirtless with the glow of the television around him like he’s some sort of scruffy, blue-eyed, tatted-up mirage. She kisses him languidly, hands on his back, leg hooked around his hip. And yeah, she fucking loves him too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who read my story and left kudos! I hope you like the end :)


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